


Raven: The Awakening

by RedDawnWrites



Category: Teen Titans - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Alternate Universe - Teen Titans (Animated Series) Setting, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-17 03:16:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 12
Words: 34,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28842240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedDawnWrites/pseuds/RedDawnWrites
Summary: Rachel was just a normal kid... well as normal as you can be when you're abused by your mother and live in a run down home. Maybe deep down she knew she was a monster. Maybe she didn't. One things for sure her life is on a completely different path now... for better or for worse.The start of my DC fic series.
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Koriand'r, Garfield Logan/Raven
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1 

The air was prickly. It stuck to Rachel’s skin, poking and prodding, creeping into her pores. Her hair stuck up, the slight crackling noises around her alerting her to the situation. She was in a storm, quite literally with her head in the clouds. Everywhere she looked, all she could see was a dark, swirling fog lit up with chaotic flashes of lightning. The wind was howling so loudly that she could barely think. Rachel opened her mouth to try and call out. Immediately, she gasped as she choked on the thick vapor that enveloped her. She coughed, trying not to drown in the sea of mist and electricity as she tried to feel for solid ground.   
Rachel was so disoriented that she wasn’t sure she even was on the ground anymore. Her body seemed to feel weightless and entirely out of her control. Every turn she made seemed fruitless, and there was nothing to see but billowing grey tendrils of cloud. Every breath Rachel took was labored, her lungs forced to take in the invading water. She was trapped - and soon to be engulfed - by the storm.   
Before she closed her eyes in defeat, Rachel heard the faintest of voices. Shouting, crying. Her name. A voice... a familiar one... She couldn’t see it’s source through the mist and her fluttering eyes, but she could tell that they were trying to help her. To save her. She opened her mouth once more, trying to call out.   
But she gasped again as the fog assaulted her lungs, and in her exhaustion, Rachel finally slipped into darkness.   
***   
Rachel woke up with her lungs begging for air. She coughed and sputtered, sitting up in her bed, trying not to heave. Her chest burned and her hand was stinging. Rachel winced as she felt blood trickle down her arm, still panting for breath. She turned over her right palm to see the cut, probably acquired from another night of violent sleep. It seemed that her dreams were trying to give her more bruises than she already had.   
Groaning, Rachel, placed her finger over the cut to stop the bleeding and dragged herself off the bed. Her muscles, aching after a long day of chores, only seem to hurt more after her restless night. It felt like she’d lost a fight every morning.   
Before she could wallow in her pain for any longer, though, Rachel heard the familiar, ear-piercing shrieks she heard every second of the day.   
“Rachel! I’m only going to call you once, you ungrateful little brat!”   
Mustering up whatever little strength she had left, Rachel called back. “I’ll be down soon!”   
“Don’t lie to me, bitch! My shotgun’s in the closet and you bet your bony little ass I’ll use it if I need to. If I don’t see you down here in less than five minutes-”   
“Got it!” Rachel yelled, cutting off the ensuing tirade as she ran to the bathroom, throwing the door shut behind her and locking it. The sound of yelling only grew louder, so she turned on her music as she stepped into the shower.   
The cold water did no favors for her sore muscles in the already freezing winter, and her cut began to sting again. Rachel shivered, closing her eyes and focusing on the beats of her songs.   
There wasn’t much to Rachel’s days other than chores and yelling and school, but these five minutes were golden. Five minutes where she knew the anger couldn’t reach her. Five minutes where a good song and the tapping of the water on the shower floor were the only things reaching her ears. Five minutes that she could pretend stretched into a whole day where she wouldn’t have to leave the bathroom and face going to school.   
Or, even better, where she could leave the bathroom and open the door to a small, lovely suburban home that smelled of buttery pancakes and fresh coffee in the morning. With a dad flipping pancakes on the stove and a mom who smiled at her and gave her a hug, wishing her good luck on her test. An annoying younger brother who teased her and a baby sister she could cuddle and miss while she was at school.   
Sometimes if she thought too long and too hard, Rachel swore she could smell the pancakes and hear a woman’s kind, loving voice. But then she opened her eyes to the grout-ridden bathroom tiles and the blaring music and the stench of cigarette smoke that somehow had invaded every inch of the house and never seemed to leave. And the dream was shattered.   
Another shrill shriek signalled the end of her five minutes, and Rachel rushed to get dressed and run down the stairs, anxious about keeping her mother waiting. As she ran into the kitchen, her shoes still untied, Rachel tripped and tumbled onto the tile floor.   
“You’re late,” her mother said dryly, offering no sympathy - perhaps even a little distaste   
\- for Rachel’s fall. “It’s 7:32.”   
Rachel grimaced, her cut throbbing now as she’d used her hand to break her fall. “I-I’m sorry. I, um, hurt myself this morning and needed to clean out the cut. It won’t happen again, ever. I swear.”   
“Shut up,” the woman sighed, massaging her temple as she leaned back on the cough.   
“Everything you say makes me want to vomit. I don’t even know why you’re still here.”   
Rachel nodded slowly. “Right... I’ll be going to school soon.”   
Her mother let out a shrill laugh, though there was little mirth in her tone. “No. I mean why you’re still here. Alive. With me. Ruining my life. I should've gone with the damn coat hanger.”   
Rachel swallowed, biting her cheek. These were words that weren’t uncommon with her mother. It wasn’t her fault anyway, the drugs kept her hopped up in a strange state of mind. It couldn’t be helped, she thought, as she opened the cabinet and searched for a band-aid.   
Another loud groan came from the other room. “Where the hell is my wine? Get me some wine, Rachel.”   
“Um...” Rachel rifled through the cabinets, trying desperately to find some kind of gauze to help stop the bleeding. “I’ll bring it to you in a minute!”   
“When I say now, you know I mean right the hell now!”   
“I’m just looking for a band-aid!”   
“Rachel!” Before she had time to react to the last yell, there was a gust of air next to her ear and the piercing sound of glass shattering.   
Rachel gasped, still partly in shock, as she took in the sight of the broken wine glass on the floor next to her. She looked back to see her mother standing at the entrance to the kitchen, a twisted smile on her face. As she moved into the sunlight, Rachel could see her face. It was streaked with smeared make-up, overdrawn and exaggerated from the night out. There was vomit staining her dress, combined with the usual spots of wine. Her mother looked as if she’d woken up in a dumpster.   
“Listen, you little bitch,” she said, her words miraculously not slurring for once, “I fucking fed you, and bathed you, and clothed you, for all these goddamn years. And I never once ask for anything in return.” As she came closer, Rachel held her breath, anticipating the rotten musk of cheap cologne and liquor. “So when your mother asks you for such a small favor as a glass of wine in the morning, what do you think is the appropriate response?”   
Rachel dared not to breathe, for fear of inhaling the toxic resultant of her mother’s night out, so she replied softly, looking at the ground. “I should... bring you the wine. Immediately. No questions asked.”   
“Hm,” her mother smiled sarcastically, “you think you know what’s best for me, don’t you?”   
“What?” Rachel gasped out, as her mother grabbed her hand, squeezing it ruthlessly. The blood seeped out as pain coursed through her arm. “Mom... mom, please,” she whispered in agony. The smell of ethanol - so strong it could have been gasoline - entered her nostrils.   
“You think you’re better than me? You think I need judgments from a teenager?”   
“No, of course not!” Rachel bit her lip tears springing to her eyes. “No, now please just... let go... please I’ll give you the wine next time.”   
After a moment of silent calculation, the fire in the other woman’s eyes seemed to dim, and she dropped Rachel’s hand in disgust. “Clean this shit up. Your blood better not stain this tile. And get the hell out of here before eight. Richard’s coming over and the last thing I need him to see is a mistake from my twenties.”   
Rachel stared at her mother’s retreating figure, clutching her hand and holding back tears. Each drop that streaked down her cheek felt like a betrayal, a win for her mother. She couldn’t let her win, couldn’t let her feel like she’d broken her. Steeling her nerves, Rachel wrapped a cloth towel around her hand, tied up her hair, and began picking up the pieces of her fractured life.


	2. Chapter 2

Rachel felt her chest tighten as she stood in front of the school building ten minutes before class started. There were still a few students milling about in the courtyard - a few students that made traversing through that courtyard feel like a minefield to Rachel. She glanced down at her clothes, slightly tattered from being so worn, but now also stained with blood and booze from the altercation this morning. She pulled her jacket tight over the blouse, hoping no one would see.   
Taking a deep breath, Rachel walked through the courtyard, her thoughts maintaining a singular focus. Get inside. Get to her locker. If she focused on not being a total screw up for at least one moment of her day, hopefully no one would notice her.   
As she walked towards the hallway, Rachel heard snickers behind her and felt her cheeks warm. She turned to see Arianna and a gaggle of her other cheerleading friends sitting on a bench in the courtyard. Arianna met her eyes and gave her a cloying smile.   
“Rachel,” she began, her voice dripping with a poisonous honey, “you seem to be going all in on that grunge emo Oscar-the-Grouch aesthetic today.” The other girls giggled at the joke, their gazes training onto all of Rachel’s fatal fashion faux pas.   
Rachel bit the inside of her cheek, willing herself to keep a straight face. “Thanks,” she muttered, then mentally kicked herself for sounding so submissive and accepting of Arianna’s jab towards her. The last thing she needed was to cement herself as a target for more of their bullying.   
Arianna raised an eyebrow, then scoffed. “What are you still standing there and staring at me for? Sadly, you can’t gain a fashion sense simply through the powers of observation.”   
Rachel didn’t have the energy or time to retort this, and she wasn’t so sure she would be able to come up with a witty comeback anyway, so she simply rolled her eyes and walked away, the sound of their continued laughter ringing in her ears.   
As she approached her locker, Rachel’s breath finally seemed to return to a normal pace, and she let out a long sigh of relief when her fingers made contact with the cool metal of the lock. It was grounding to have a little piece of her own space at school, where everything else seemed so intensely out of her control all the time. Putting in the combination was almost a meditative practice, calming her down and removing her mentally from the idea of school and all it brought upon her on a daily basis.   
“Boo! ”   
Rachel snapped out of her thoughts and turned around to see the familiar bright pink locks of her best friend’s hair. Kori’s hair was often the first thing people noticed about her, and it had a sort of presence of its own. The ombre colors of the sunset, it seemed to flow and sometimes even float behind Kori, giving her an air of authority and a regal demeanor. It was no surprise that Kori was always voted in for any position of leadership and a shoo-in for the top nominee for homecoming and prom. Though, Rachel supposed the head cheerleading position may also have a factor in this.   
Kori waved her hand in front of Rachel’s face. “Rache? Hello?” she said. “Back to   
Earth?”   
Rachel grabbed Kori’s hand, smiling sheepishly. “Sorry, Kori. I’ve been a bit distracted this morning.”   
Kori rolled her eyes. “Well, duh. I’ve been yelling your name from across the hallway for like a solid minute. What’s up with you?” Kori’s question seemed innocent enough, but Rachel could tell that it was tinged with worry. That was how most of Kori’s ‘lighthearted’ questions went - though Rachel couldn’t blame her. She was the only one who knew even a fraction about how bad her life at home was.   
Rachel bit her lip, debating whether she should attempt to cover up the blood and the events of this morning. “I... nothing really,” she said, trying to sound nonchalant, “Just have a lot on my mind I guess. With me turning sixteen and all soon. It’s just - wow - I’m becoming an adult.”   
Kori’s eyes narrowed. “Rachel, you’re terrible at lying.”   
Before Rachel’s best friend had the chance to corner her into an interrogation, the morning bell rang. “Oh no. It looks like we gotta get to class, Kori! I’ll catch you up later.”   
“Rachel-” Kori started, folding her arms in annoyance as Rachel quickly started walking down the hallway, away from her. “I hope you know I’m not letting this go!”   
“Nothing to let go!” Rachel retorted, waving goodbye as she speed-walked to class. She grimaced, anticipating Kori’s intensive line of questioning at lunch today. There was no doubt she would figure out about the fight and become even more worried. And Rachel hated it when she worried her friends.   
Sometimes she wondered if worrying them too much would make them leave. She had realized from a young age that people only stuck around when you were easy... easier to be friends with, an easier daughter to raise.   
Slipping into her English class moments before the final bell rang earned her a side eye and small disapproving shake of the head from her teacher, Mr. Barclett. Thankfully, he seemed to take pity on Rachel - maybe it was the stained and torn clothing - and didn’t make her fulfill the usual punishment of reading a Shakespeare sonnet in front of the class.   
The last time Rachel had spoken in front of class was two years ago, the first week of freshman year of high school. Back then, everyone was still new and getting to know their role and place in the ecosystem of the high school class. Some were destined to be the jocks and cheerleaders - like Kori, who was cheerful and sweet and seemed to get along with everyone (although she’d, for some strange reason, chosen Rachel to be friends with). Other people were destined to be the nerds and geeks, spending all their time in hours-long Smash Bros tournaments in the school’s basement and hacking into the school’s technological infrastructure to pass the time. Rachel, on the other hand, knew from the moment she stepped up in front of that history class freshman year and painstakingly stuttered her way through reading the Gettysburg Address, that she was destined to be forgotten.   
And honestly, she wasn’t sure she minded that.   
“Hey!”   
The source of the whisper was a boy with bright green hair and a knowing half-smile. Logan Garfield, semi-popular competitive video game streamer and self-titled class clown since the third grade leaned towards Rachel. “You planning on ditching fifth period today to finish The Witcher?”   
Rachel smiled and nodded. Despite how terrible this day had started out, hanging out with Logan - even for a short while, as there was little time she was able to spend with her friends outside of school - always somehow managed to make her feel better. He seemed to have a magical effect on people, finding ways to make them laugh and turn their day around when they least expected it. She’d dubbed it his Sneak Happiness Attack. “Wouldn’t miss it,   
Logan. Thanks for letting me use your computer to play, too.”   
“Well, yeah. Least I could do after that freak rainstorm that destroyed all the stuff in your house. Must have been awful. I couldn’t imagine losing my precious PC.”   
The rainstorm had actually been her mother a few weeks ago, who’d gone room to room destroying all of Rachel’s belongings in a fit of rage. A rainstorm, however, was easier to explain, so it was the story she stuck to.   
“Right,” Rachel replied. “Thankfully I don’t have your weird hobby of building expensive computers just to play video games and only lost my Playstation.”   
Logan frowned, putting his hand over his heart in an exaggerated manner. “How could you call it a weird hobby? You love Triss!”   
“Aw, sorry Logan, it’s absolutely not weird when you name your 6000 dollar handmade gaming PC after a girl in a video game. It’s just me not being cool enough to understand you.”   
“You better apologize to Triss before lunchtime! Or I’ll wipe the floor with you during our gaming sesh.”   
Rachel snorted, rolling her eyes in endearment. “You are the weirdest person I have ever met.”   
“Touched.” Logan replied. “I could say the same to you.”   
Before Rachel could reply, Mr. Barclett tapped his stick on the teacher’s desk, signalling   
the start of class.   
“To be continued,” Logan whispered, causing her to roll her eyes again.   
The class discussion on Beowulf was surprisingly equal parts existentially terrifying and intensely boring. Rachel wasn’t sure how an entirely too cliche tale of a heroic monster hunter slaying a nefarious beast somehow constituted all the best parts of English literature but she didn’t make the rules. As she fell deeper into the tale of Grendel, the misunderstood and outcast villain who died by the blow of Beowulf, Rachel found herself becoming drawn into the story.   
“Now,” Mr. Barclett began, “can anyone tell me Grendel’s motivations for becoming the villain? Yes, Arianna?”   
Arianna pushed a lock of her perfectly curled blonde hair behind her ear. “It’s the same reason anyone becomes a villain. He couldn’t fit in, so he became all emo about it. Then he tried to kill the popular kids when he realized everyone was sick of his attitude.” She paused for effect, tilting her head slightly towards Rachel. “He should have just sucked it up and accepted his position in life was to be a loser.”   
Rachel felt the words pierce through her skin. It was somehow impossible to get away from the subtle torment, even in class. She saw Logan’s hand ball up into a fist out of the corner of her eye and ducked her head as she felt her classmates eyes on her.   
Mr. Barclett blinked, pursing his lips. “Well,” he finally said. “Thank you for that strangely timely and insightful, and yet incredibly shallow and short-sighted take on 11th century literature, Arianna. You never cease to amaze me.”   
  
Lunchtime was normally a welcome respite from her worries, but as Rachel walked to the cafeteria, she could only feel her dread rising. Kori was sitting at their usual table, flanked by a few of the girls from her cheer squad - coincidentally, the same girls who had been making fun of Rachel this morning. As she approached the table, the girls looked up and one of them waved to her, a friendly smile on her face.   
“Rache!” Kori said, her voice as peppy as always. “This is Jessica and Ava from my cheer squad.”   
Rachel slung her bag off her shoulders and let it fall next to her before sitting down.   
“We’ve met,” she deadpanned.   
Kori blinked, surprised, as Ava shifted uncomfortably. Jessica gave Rachel a fake smile and got up to leave. “It was nice talking to you, Kori. We’ll see you at practice?” she said.   
“See you there!”   
As the girls retreated, it was all Rachel could do to not roll her eyes. Kori’s eyes trained on her again, and Rachel knew she wasn’t going to let this morning’s events go.   
“So,” Kori began, looking at her with a knowing gaze. “What’s really been up with you?”   
“I don’t know what you mean.”   
“Yes you do.”   
Rachel bit her lip. “Just... nothing. Another fight with my mom.”   
Kori’s face immediately softened. “Oh no, girl. I’m so sorry. What happened?”   
“She was just mad. And the alcohol - it made everything worse. I mean... it’s just... the drugs-”   
“No, ” Kori said, her voice low. “It’s not the damn alcohol or whatever the hell else she’s taking these days.”   
“Percocets and good old fashioned meth.”   
“Holy shit,” Kori’s eyebrows furrowed. “Well, it’s none of those things. She’s just a wretched human being with no soul or empathy.”   
Rachel nodded slowly, thought sometimes she had a hard time believing it. It was so easy to feel like it was actually her fault that her mom treated her so terribly. That her father had abandoned them without a second thought. That everyone at school except for Kori and sometimes Logan seemed to think she was the dirt on the soles of their shoes.   
“Hey,” Kori said gently, reaching out her hand to Rachel’s. “You know you can stay over at my place whenever you need it, right? I still have that spare bedroom decorated with all your old punk band posters.”   
Rachel laughed at this. Two years ago, when her mother had left town without as much as a goodbye or an indication as to when she’d be back, Rachel was left in her house without any food and no electricity for weeks. Kori’s parents had gladly let her stay over as long as she needed, and even had worked to decorate the whole bedroom to her liking - mostly with embarrassingly large posters of Fall Out Boy and Mayday Parade. Walking into that room after being in her crumbling, empty, smoke-smelling house for almost a month had made Rachel want to cry.   
But as much as she wanted to take Kori’s offer, Rachel knew her mother would come knocking at their door with her wicked anger soon, and it wasn’t fair to expose any other family to the woman’s fits of rage and vengeance.   
“It’s alright, Kori,” Rachel said, offering her friend a weak smile. “I’ll just stay out of her way for now, I guess. I’m used to it,” she shrugged.   
Kori clasped her hand, her eyes wide. “But you promise to tell me if it gets bad again.”   
“Of course,” Rachel lied, trying to keep her voice reassuring. “Anyway. Tell me about this weekend!”   
Kori’s face got slightly red, though it was hard to see over her tanned skin. “I... don’t know what you’re talking about.”   
“Oh come on, ” Rachel rolled her eyes. “Your date with a certain MMA club president?” “It wasn’t really a date...” Kori said thoughtfully.   
“Uh huh. And what exactly happened again?”   
“He took me to this cute little ice cream shop where we had to make our own flavor together, and then we went stargazing. He’s, um, surprisingly good at astronomy,” Kori finished, barely able to hold back a wistful smile.   
Rachel rolled her eyes at her friend’s terrible attempts at trying to play down her emotions. “And now you and Dick are happily dating?”   
“No!” Kori’s voice was hushed, as her hands raised to cover her reddening cheeks.   
“Geez, Rache. It was just one... hangout.”   
“One date, ” Rachel corrected, “that apparently went rather well. And anyway, you guys have basically been seeing each other every day for the whole semester. One on one, might I add. If that’s not practically dating, I don’t know what is.”   
“Maybe you’re right,” Kori relented. “But I don’t know, Rache. I’m kind of nervous to see him again, especially now that it might be official or...something. Do I text him? Does he text me? Is it bad if he hasn’t texted to hang out again?” Kori put her hands on her head. “This is all way too confusing for me,” she groaned.   
Rachel patted her friend on her head. “It looks like you won’t have to wait for an answer to those questions.”   
“How do you know?” Kori wailed.   
“Because,” Rachel started, looking over Kori’s shoulder, “here he comes.”   
Richard Grayson flashed Rachel a smile as her eyes locked with his. His smiles were different from those of other guys - guys who were cocky and hiding years of insecurities behind their carefully put-together persona. Dick Grayson was somehow self-assured enough to go by the first name Dick in the 21st century and have no one make fun of him for it. Rachel could tell what Kori liked about him, as it was hard not to like someone so genuine and confident.   
“Hello, Rachel, Kori,” Dick said as he approached them.   
Kori gave him a weak smile. “Dick! How - um - how was your weekend?”   
He raised an eyebrow. “Um. It was good... I hope?”   
“Oh! Um, that’s good. Good to hear. Do anything fun?” Kori’s face seemed to be stuck with a strained smile and her bright green eyes remained scarily unblinking.   
Dick seemed equally as confused with the train of the conversation as Kori. “Uh... yes,” he laughed apprehensively, “I actually had a really good time on Saturday.”   
If Kori heard Dick say this, her face didn’t show it. In fact, Rachel was worried her friend’s brain had somehow completely fried. “Uh-huh,” Kori said, nodding blankly.   
Rachel groaned. “Geez, you guys. It shouldn't be this hard to ask someone out on a second date.”   
Kori let out a tiny gasp at this and Dick coughed awkwardly. “Uh, right,” he started, looking back at Kori, who’s eyes were focused anywhere but at Dick. “I mean. I would love to.   
If... If that’s okay with you, Kori?”   
“Oh, yeah, mhm,” Kori said, still refusing to meet Dick’s eyes.   
“She’d love to,” Rachel said.   
Dick nodded slowly. “Uh, okay. I’ll text you, then, Kori?”   
“Mhm!”   
Rachel grimaced. For as personable and loving Kori was to everyone else, she turned into a bumbling mess around guys she liked - but to be honest, none of her past crushes had affected this badly. Dick Grayson must have really been as special as everyone said he was.   
“She’ll look forward to hearing from you,” Rachel translated.   
Dick seemed to understand and nodded, looking at Rachel. “Well, then. I guess I’ll see you guys around.”   
“See ya,” Rachel called out as he walked away, then turned back to Kori, who was still slightly awestruck. “Hey, bud. You doing okay?”   
Kori’s eyes were still as wide as saucers as she stared at Dick’s retreating figure. “I, um... wasn’t expecting him to actually ask me out. Again!”   
Rachel shook her head. “You need to stop. Dick has clearly been into you since the beginning of the school year. Every time cheer practice happens next to the weight room the man finds literally any reason to talk to you, and I once saw him take six bathroom breaks just to smile at you. Who the hell needs to pee six times in one hour?”   
Kori slapped her arm lightly. “Don’t get my hopes up!”   
“Oh, whatever.”   
“I’m serious, Rache! I like him a lot. I’m going to go crazy if he doesn’t like me back.”   
“I’m serious too, Kor. You’re one of the sweetest, most genuine people I’ve ever met.   
You deserve the best. The last thing you should be asking yourself is if someone else likes you!”   
Kori’s eyes turned glassy and her lip quivered slightly as Rachel spoke. “You really mean that? Aw, Rachel!” She wrapped her in a hug.   
Rachel smiled at her best friend - really smiled. It was a rare feeling of purity for her, a side that really only came out around Kori. No matter how bad a day was, she could count on her to find a way to turn it around. If Dick Grayson did anything to hurt her, Rachel might just have to put a curse on him.   
  
As fourth period came to a close, Rachel tapped her fingers against her desk impatiently. The last thing she wanted was to spend a minute more learning math, a subject she absolutely dreaded. And she was excited to finally be able to spend some more time chilling in the video game room with Logan, whose easygoing attitude and continuous joking were a great distraction from her near-failing grade in Calculus.   
But when the bell rang and Rachel quickly jumped up to leave, she heard Ms. Langford call her name.   
“Rachel! The office just called you up. It says here your mother is here to pick you up. Family emergency?” Ms. Langford gave her the hall pass, and Rachel took it, confused. Her mother had never taken the effort to pick her up from school - and unless the family emergency was about her great aunt that lived across the country, she was fairly certain it was a made-up excuse.   
“Uh, thanks,” she replied, turning the note over in her hand as the pit in her stomach grew.   
Ms. Langford gave her a pitying smile. “I hope everything’s okay.”   
Silently, Rachel grabbed her bag and walked out of the classroom to head to the office, her mind preoccupied with the horrifying thoughts of what might be coming. Was her mother about to leave again without telling her? Would she have to scrounge for food again, beg the electricity company for a day longer to pay the bills?   
As her thoughts spiraled, Rachel barely noticed as Logan fell into step with her. “Hey!” he said, tapping her shoulder. “Thought we were headed to the game room together?”   
“Right. Sorry, Logan,” Rachel said. “My mom’s here to pick me up...for some reason.   
Can we do it tomorrow?”   
Logan nodded, his brows furrowed. “Yeah, of course. Is everything okay?”   
Rachel ducked her head, trying to hide her face from him. “Yeah, it’s fine. Just probably pulling me out to do some chores or something.”   
Logan stopped her. “Wait, you mom’s pulling you out of school to do chores?”   
Rachel winced. Shit, was that not something that normal mothers did? It was always hard to tell what parts of her home life were normal and what parts were abusive. That’s why her policy generally tended to be saying as little as possible about it to anyone. Logan’s concerned gaze made her heart beat faster. She didn’t want him to know any more than he needed to. People didn’t tend to stick around once they did.   
“Ha,” she laughed weakly. “Kidding. It’s for a doctor’s appointment - just completely slipped my mind! Anyway, gotta go.”   
“Rache- wait!” Logan called, but she ignored him. Rachel weaved through the other students in the hall, walking quickly to the office and trying to suppress the rising tide of dread in her body. It was like a primal urge inside her that was telling her to turn back, get help, run away.   
But it was too late to listen to her instincts. Rachel opened the door to the office to face her mother. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: rape

Rachel’s mother sat in front of the secretary’s desk, her face expressionless and foot tapping impatiently. Her impatience and deadpan expression were two of the qualities she had that Rachel also saw in herself - not that she liked it. Even the thought of being similar to her mother in any way made Rachel feel sick. She remembered something her mother told her after a long night out, after she’d thrown up on the couch and yelled at Rachel to clean it up.   
“This is your future,” she’d slurred out. “It’s going to be like this for you too, when your life is ruined by a child and all your hope to be anything is burnt out. No matter how far you think you can run from this, you can’t. It’s in your blood. It’s your fate.”   
Seeing her mother now, with the stone-cold face of someone on the hunt, Rachel shuddered to think that was the case.   
“Mom,” she said gingerly. “What are you- why are you here?”   
“Come with me.” Her mother stood up and promptly walked out of the office. Perplexed, Rachel ran after her.   
“Mom? Did something happen?” There was again no answer, as her mom opened the door to their old beat-up car and got in, Rachel following in suit. “Did... you need me for chores?   
Are you leaving again? Do I need to go get food?”   
“Shut up !” Her mother’s scream was ear-splitting, making Rachel go cold. Her voice became a deadly quiet as she continued. “I don’t need to explain myself to you. You’re my fucking property, bitch. You understand me?”   
Rachel’s breath hitched as her mom grabbed her arm, twisting it. “Ow!”   
“Shut up! You think this is painful?” she laughed jeeringly, turning her key in the ignition.   
“Wait until you see what I have in store for you at home.” “What?” Rachel rasped out, nursing her arm.   
“It’ll teach you to shut up and listen for once, that’s for sure.” She laughed again, but it was bitter, full of resentment and anger. “That’s what my mother told me too, ya know. Family tradition!”   
“Mom... I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Rachel gripped onto the seat. Her mom was an infamously terrible driver - as many a cop in the city had realized over the years - but today was way worse. The odd thing was that her mother seemed completely sober, for once in her life, but still her actions spoke otherwise. The pit in her stomach grew as they arrived at the house, and Rachel spotted another old pickup truck parked in the driveway.   
“Who is that?” she asked. “Who’s at our house?”   
“You’ll find out.” her mom replied, getting out of the car and dragging Rachel out with her. Her wounded hand from this morning was still sore, and Rachel let out another gasp of pain as her mother harshly tugged her into the house and tossed her aside.   
Rachel fell to the ground and noticed someone’s large boots at the door. Before she could ask another question, a large, burly man stepped out into the living room. His mouth was curled into a rotting smile, revealing his lack of teeth, and he ran a hand through his semi-balding head. “So this is the girl, huh?” he said. His voice was raspy, like he’d just finished smoking a pack of cigarettes. Rachel wouldn’t have been surprised if he had.   
“How long to get rid of the debt?” Rachel’s mother asked him.   
“Debt?” Rachel asked.   
Both adults ignored her. “Give me an hour or so.” He looked back at Rachel, laughing boorishly. “I doubt she’ll even last that long. She’s inexperienced, ain’t she? Wouldn’t wanna break her in too rough.”   
“She’s yours. I don’t care what you do as long as it gets me out of debt.” Her mother left the room, grabbing a bottle of vodka on the way out.   
With only the pair of them left in the room, the man grunted, grabbing Rachel and pulling her up. She was too much in shock to retort or wriggle out of his grasp. The stench of his smoky clothes mixed with the sour alcohol on his breath made her heave.   
Suddenly, there was a sharp sound in the air, and her cheek stung, growing warm. Rachel gasped, realizing that the man had slapped her. Too stunned to scream, she turned her head to face him, only to be hit with another wave of nausea.   
“It ain’t nice to act so disgusted by a customer. Didn’t your mother ever teach you manners?” Then he laughed at his apparent joke. “I guess whores don’t teach their daughters anything but how to be degenerate sluts.”   
“What are you going to do?” Rachel whimpered, raising her hand to rub her face.   
“Please, I don’t know anything about... about this.”   
The man scoffed. “That’s the best part sweetheart. I get to teach you.”   
Tears welled up in her eyes as the rat-faced man tugged at her shirt, his calloused old hand finding its way to her chest. The realization that her mother had done this - had sold her only daughter out for the drugs with not a speck of remorse - hit Rachel like a truck. As the preying man groped more and more of her body, she began to cry. The pit in her stomach was more than a pit now. It was a black hole, filled with the anger and hopelessness and built-up resentment she’d had over the years. Her tears felt so hot and full of rage that they burnt her skin as they travelled down her cheeks. If this was her destiny, to become her mother, then Rachel realized she’d rather die. It was better to be dead than to become so awful of a human being, so soulless and vile. Kori was right - this wasn’t the drugs and alcohol. Rachel’s mother was rotten to the very core.   
And maybe she was too.   
A hand slipped under her jeans. And Rachel screamed.   
That was all she could clearly remember, at least.   
In the next moment, the pit - the hole - in her stomach became a raging battery. As Rachel’s hand clasped the man’s probing one, he started screaming too. She looked down and realized why. His hand had nearly become putty, the bones sticking out at odd angles as her hand squeezed the life out of it. It was as if anger was her only fuel, and her grip had become lethal. The man screamed in agony, falling to the floor and clutching it.   
Raven couldn’t see clearly anymore. The space between each breath seemed to feel longer and longer, and the pressure was building up again. She grabbed the horrible creature in front of her again, somehow mustering enough strength to pull him up. He looked at her and continued screaming.   
In the corner of her eye, Rachel saw her mother rushing over to her, grabbing the vile monster and pushing Rachel away. Seeing red, Rachel shoved her mother back. To her horror, the older woman slammed back into the wall. Before Rachel could think about that, the man shakily got up. “I- please don’t hurt me,” he whimpered.   
“Go. Before I tear you to pieces.” The voice inside her wasn’t hers - it couldn’t have been. But the man listened anyway, grabbing his shoes at the door with his working hand and shuffling out.   
When her breath finally became normal again, Rachel’s senses cleared, and she saw her mother standing up, looking at her with shock more than anger. But Rachel knew that when the shock wore off... she would be in trouble.   
Without looking back, Rachel grabbed her jacket and ran out the front door.   
  
The woods behind her old, run-down excuse of a neighborhood were more confusing than Rachel had first realized when she’d run into them. Her disoriented running had led her deep into a mass of trees and dirt, and there was little in the way of trails or markings to guide her back home. Not that it mattered - she was as likely dead back home as she was in these woods.   
Rachel took out her old crappy flip-phone, hoping for a signal. Unfortunately, like everything else that day, it seemed that this wouldn’t go her way. Taking her surroundings with exhaustion, she plopped down onto an old log, burying her face in her hands. There was nothing left for her back home, she realized. There was no way she could live in a house where she knew her mother would try to sell her off. There was no way she could continue to even call her a mother. Whatever that wretched woman was, it wasn’t a parent in any right.   
A sudden chill overtook Rachel, and she wrapped her jacket tighter around her. There were various cuts and scrapes all over her body, partially from the abuse this morning and partially from her haphazard run away from her home. Every part of her body ached and bled, and all she felt like doing was falling into a deep slumber. Perhaps dying in the woods wouldn’t be so bad, she reasoned. At least her body could be used as fertilizer for the plants. At least then she could be useful in some form.   
Wiping away tears that still fell down her face, Rachel leaned back against a tree, closing her eyes to settle in. The mid-afternoon sun peeked through the tree-tops, slowly warming her body up. It probably wasn’t a good idea, she realized. But part of her had lost any hope or struggle for life.   
Before she was able to fall asleep, a faint licking at her ankle jerked Rachel awake. Startled, she screamed, jumping up onto the log. It was a green snake - larger than any she had encountered before. Rather than moving to strike, it looked curiously up at her, almost seeming to make eye contact. Rachel knew she should be afraid - she couldn’t remember if green snakes were venomous or not, but it was probably better to be safe than sorry - but there was something comforting about it. Familiar, even.   
The snake edged closer, slithering up the log and edging its head next to her ankle. Rachel tensed up, expecting a bite. But the snake simply rubbed its head against her ankle, occasionally flicking its tongue back and forth against it. It was almost like it was petting her.   
Cautiously, Rachel reached out her hand and ran it over the snake’s shiny, rough, green scales. “Aw, hey. You’ve been through a lot too, haven’t you buddy?” she whispered, trailing her fingers over it.   
The snake seemed to nod its head. Maybe Rachel was going crazy. She’d tried to put the freak accident from earlier out of her mind - the coursing electric power, her sudden fit of fatal strength, the eldritch voice that poured out of her soul. But now here she was, talking to a snake. She was pretty sure she was on the path to becoming a Disney villain at this point.   
“My life is a fucking mess, snake,” she sighed. Perhaps using a snake as a therapist was a new low point for her, but if she was crazy, Rachel figured she might as well lean into it. “I’m practically homeless now. My mother is a psychotic bitch who tried to sell me to the highest - well, actually, lowest - bidder. And I apparently have dark horrific powers that can kill people.”   
The snake perked up, hissing. It wriggled up her arm, curling around her neck to face her. Rachel laughed, partly from the ridiculousness of it all. “You seem to care more for me than my own mother.”   
The snake hissed again, rubbing it’s head against her neck.   
“Thanks,” Rachel said, sincerely. “I don’t suppose I could come live with you in whatever burrow you got? I promise I’m a good roommate. I can catch mice.” The air grew chilly again, and the snake burrowed into her jacket for warmth.   
“Or maybe I can take you home with me... I mean-” Rachel sighed, realizing the futility of that sentence. Maybe she could stay with Kori for a bit, but she knew her mom was bound to find her soon enough. It was better to disappear altogether. Live in a place her mother would never even guess to look for her. “Hey, snake. I need to get out of this forest before I starve or freeze to death. Think you can help me out?”   
The snake nodded again, and Rachel stopped questioning her sanity and simply decided to accept the inevitable. She was clearly a wizard of some kind. Maybe a Slytherin, given the obvious strange snake powers.   
As she followed the snake’s path out of the trees and back into her neighborhood, a sense of resolve returned to her body. The house was dead to her, and finally, so was her mother. She was Rachel of no Land now, Rachel without a home or family, Rachel on her own. If that was how it had to be - homeless and making friends with snakes - then she supposed it was all she could do.   
Before she left the woods, Rachel knelt down, facing her new woodland friend. “Hey. Thanks for everything, Snake. I wish I could give you some food or something in return. But if I ever catch myself in your neck of the woods again, I’ll owe ya one.”   
Silently - apparently Rachel hadn’t gained the ability to talk to it quite yet - the snake reached over and kissed the palm of her hand. Then, as quickly as it came, it slithered off into the woods, leaving Rachel dumbstruck.


	4. Chapter 4

The walk back home was over too soon, and Rachel quickly found herself staring back at the dilapidated shack that she’d stayed in for nearly sixteen years of her life. Even from the outside, it was easy to see that nothing good went on in there. It was why she’d never brought anyone over in all these years, why she’d spent most of her childhood cooped up in one room, trying to block out the wondrous sights and sounds of her drug addled mother and the dangerous people she brought home.   
Steeling her nerves, Rachel walked inside.   
As soon as she heard the front door close, Rachel’s mother rushed out of the living room, her gaze trained on Rachel. She started screaming her usual ranting insults at her, things that Rachel now blocked out, pushing her mother away as she took the stairs two at a time to her room.   
“You piece of shit! Brat! You fucking ruined everything! I should have aborted you with a fucking coathanger!”   
“You’re right, mother.” Rachel opened up her closet and dragged out her clothes, quickly starting to stuff them into her bag.   
“The hell I am, you bitch. I gave up a third of my damn life to give you a fucking roof over your head and food to eat.” The woman grabbed Rachel again, her usual iron grip radiating pain through Rachel’s arm.   
She wrenched her arm away, biting her cheek as the pain hit her in another wave. “Congratulations,” she rasped out. “You met the absolute minimum bar for keeping another human barely alive half of the time. Do you want a fucking medal, mother?”   
“Don’t talk back to me like that.”   
“Or what? You’ll kick me out?” Rachel laughed, throwing her meager belongings and stuffing them into the bag. There wasn’t much left anyway, after years of going without so her mother could fulfill her drug habit and the rage fit that had left most of what she’d worked hard to buy destroyed. “Too late. I’m leaving.”   
“To go to that girl’s house? Nice try. I’ll be there the next night over with a warrant for kidnapping. You know I basically own the pigs at the police station.”   
“I’m not telling you where I’m going,” Rachel muttered, slinging the bag over her shoulder and pushing past the other woman.   
Her mother followed her down the stairs. “I won’t let you leave, then.”   
Rachel turned to challenge her, to scream and yell and finally get the hell out of dodge. But instead, she was met with a swinging glass bottle to the head, and the last thing she saw before her world went dark was the image of a psychotic caretaker, smiling with wicked triumph.   


It was dark now. Dark and suffocating. Rachel gasped for breath and found that there was none. Her head throbbed and her whole body felt like it had just been in a fight with a much larger opponent.   
She groped in the dark for any solid matter. The dark wasn’t just dark, she realized - it was a void where no light shone through. She was in a black hole that seemed all at once endless and claustrophobic.   
“H-hello?” she called out, surprised her voice still worked. “Is anyone there?” It seemed silly to try and seek help in what she knew was a dream. But the fear was real. In fact, Rachel wasn’t all too sure where the boundary lay between dream and reality any longer. Maybe there never was one.   
There was no spoken answer to her call, but a sudden rumbling of the air around her seemed to respond. It was a deep, pulsating sound, one that made her head feel like it was splitting apart. Rachel groaned, grabbing at her head and falling to her knees. The darkness now felt as if it was pressing into her, the pressure mounting and peaking at her head.   
Rachel screamed. She couldn’t think, she couldn’t move. The pain was agonizing, all-consuming. In the distance, or perhaps as the result of a dazed hallucination, Rachel started to hear it again. The only constant in all her torturous dreams... voices. She’d never been able to make out the words the voices in her dreams had said too well before, only her name. But somehow, this time, this voice felt clearer than ever, even between the pain and confusion and darkness.   
“Rachel. Rachel. Raven.” It was different from the other voices. This one was deep, coarse. Like the sound of someone who had lay asleep for decades and just risen from a long slumber.   
“Who’s there?” Rachel called. “Who are you? Who is Raven?”   
“Raven. Raven.”   
“Am... Am I Raven?”   
The voice started speaking again, saying something - perhaps answering her questions at last. But as the pressure mounted once more and Rachel screamed in agony, the only thing she heard was the sound of ringing in her ears.   
***   
Rachel woke up in darkness once more, and for a moment, she thought she was still stuck in her dream. The headache was mostly gone, replaced with only a remaining ringing in her ears. She gently pressed her hand to the sore spot, where her sorry excuse of a mother had hit her with the wine bottle, and hissed in pain. Her fingers met with flaking dried blood and a large cut. The glass must have hit her harder than she’d realized.   
Rachel blinked, allowing her eyes to adjust a bit to the room. It was the unfinished basement, usually locked and only used to store old pieces of furniture. Rachel got up, giving herself time to adjust to standing before walking up to the door. As she’d imagined, it was locked. She could only hope her mother wouldn’t forget she had locked a human being down here and maybe had the courtesy of throwing some water or food in every once in a while. Then again, who was she kidding? She might die down here. A theme that felt sadly common to today.   
Rachel started walking to the other end of the basement, trying to see if there was possibly another exit, but in the dark she bumped into something rather large. Squinting, Rachel kneeled down. There should have been nothing down here - and Rachel had never bothered to go to the trouble of exploring at the risk of her mother’s wrath. But yet, as her vision cleared, Rachel saw that she was in the middle of piles and piles of boxes.   
Rachel pulled out her phone - something her mother clearly didn’t have the sense to take off of her before holding her captive, thankfully - and turned on the flashlight. She started opening the boxes, rummaging eagerly through their contents. There were boxes of old items, books, journals, photo albums. Things that she’d wondered how she’d lost over the years, memories of old houses and friends that she’d assumed forever lost. Rachel sat back as the realization dawned upon her. Her whole life was downstairs, in these boxes. The wretched woman had thieved, collected it all from Rachel and hid it away from her to make her feel helpless.   
As she neared the last box, Rachel paused to examine some writing on the top. Rachel - files and parentage.   
Parentage? She thought. It seemed unlikely that her mother would keep any happy memories or official paperwork of herself being a mom... but that was only half the equation.   
With a newly found unabashed fervor, Rachel tore through the box, opening it up and staring ravenously at the treasures it held. But to her surprise, there were only two items in it.   
At the top lay an innocuous looking manilla folder. When she opened it up, the only thing Rachel found was her birth certificate. She quickly scanned the bottom to see the parent signers, but there was only one signature for the mother, a neat cursive that spelled out the woman’s name. The father’s signature section remained blank, and Rachel’s heart sank.   
“At least I know I’m not kidnapped,” Rachel muttered. “Although kidnappers might have actually treated me better.”   
She put aside the file and delved deeper into the box to bring out the larger item - a strange leather-bound book with inscriptions she couldn’t read on the front... or so she thought. The longer Rachel stared at the book, the more decipherable the inscriptions seemed to become. It didn’t really feel as if she could read the language, per se, but almost as if the inscriptions themselves were imprinting their meaning into her mind.   
“Arts of Darkness and Channeling the Eldritch,” Rachel muttered, running her hand over the raised lettering. “Well don’t you seem like a fun read? Not sinister in the slightest.”   
Carefully, Rachel undid the clasp of the book and flipped through the first few pages. There were no dedications or notes, nothing to indicate the origin of the book. Briefly, Rachel wondered why such a strange book would be in a box with her birth certificate. Had her mother done some strange witchcraft ceremony to try and abort her?   
Rachel started reading the first chapter, and introduction to the contents of the book had little to do with childbirth or parentage and everything to do with summoning evil demons and underworld demigods to the Earth for selfish purposes. Arts of Darkness was evidently both a textbook and PSA to apparently warn dumb people from selling their soul to the devil, and at the same time a step by step instruction phamplet on how and why to do exactly that, with even broken down rituals for different specific demons and specific wishes as well.   
A feeling of dread gripped her once more as Rachel flipped through to near the end of the book, where a single yellow sticky note stood out as a page marker. Hesitating for a moment, she bit her lip and opened the book to the marked page, another “not recommended ‘do not try this at home’ ritual” that was still clearly recorded with a very detail-oriented description.   
This ritual in particular seemed much more dangerous than any other in the book - perhaps why the author had saved it for last. “How to summon the father of all demons, the slayer of many universes, the bringer of terror across the stars,” Rachel read. Her eyes widened as she read the first part again. “The father... of all demons.”   
Part of her recognized that this seemed a bit silly. Who would listen to a strange medieval magic book that focused - in great detail - on why people should summon demons?   
But something inside of Rachel at that point made her keep going, keep digging for the truth.   
On one hand, it made sense. Her mother was soulless, somehow with so little regard to her own flesh and blood that Rachel wondered if her conscience was even existent. It would explain so much to say that her mother’s soul was slowly - as the book described it - chiseled away after the many years she made the promise. And, Rachel mused, it would explain the sudden surges of terrifying power, the ability to apparently talk to animals - or maybe just cute snakes - that she was dealing with. With everything else that seemed to be going horribly wrong today, Rachel supposed it wouldn’t be completely out of the ordinary if she found out her real father was a million and a half year old alien-wizard-dude who apparently thought her mother’s soul wasn't even enough to keep him around long enough to raise a child. Whatever this demon expected from her, Rachel would never fulfill.   
She couldn’t leave it at this. In a flash of equal parts motivation and dread, Rachel started whispering the incantation of summoning. Her anger and resentment, her bitterness that had built up from the terrible day and the even worse lifetime of abuse and abandonment seeped into her words, giving them the power they needed to channel a spirit. Squeezing the cut on her hand until the pain was unbearable, she kept chanting, letting the words of the old, forgotten language overtake her in a trance, until the meaning became embedded in her mind.   
Do not leave me here to cower   
Come to me in my darkest hour   
Find what ails and hinders me   
Destroy it and I shall give to thee   
At the end of the incantation, Rachel pressed her wounded hand onto the floor of the basement, waiting and watching for the blood to seep below the floorboards and into the earth itself. As her blood began to pool around her, she felt a familiar current begin to rise, coursing through her hand and into her arm, running up towards her body. Rachel’s eyes widened as the current became visible, a crackle of electricity followed by a dark black cloud. It looked like tendrils of smoke, but even darker, and more solid. As if it was it’s own being.   
To Rachel’s horror, the smoky black substance began to come together, forming the mold of a towering being. As the tendrils rose to the ceiling of the basement, taking shape bit by bit, Rachel could only stare.   
Finally, the form was finished, and in the place of those tendrils of smoke stood a monster of a being, a fiery red humanoid twice Rachel’s size in height. He had white hair that flowed past his shoulders, teeth and even tusks that seemed like they could rip her to shreds with a single swipe. On top of his head protruded two stick thin antlers, and where Rachel expected there to be feet, two large hooves instead supported the giant demon. But perhaps most disturbing of all was the demon’s face. Instead of eyes like a humans, on his face lay 4 beady red spheres, large and discerning, like a fly’s. Rachel’s stomach turned as she looked at them.   
The demon’s eyes seemed to take her in as well, as they trained in on her, unblinking.   
“Hmm,” he thundered, his voice so deep that Rachel had to strain to understand his words.   
“Who seeks to disturb Trigon’s slumber?”   
Rachel’s breath returned to her. “I- you- I’m your- you’re my...you’re Trigon?”   
The demon scoffed. “You speak like a child. Did you not hear me the first time?” “You’re my father,” Rachel whispered.   
Trigon’s eyes focused back on her, squinting. He paused for a moment, taking her in again. Then his mouth curled upward in a terrifying display of his sharp teeth, letting loose a laugh that had no mirth. “So it appears I am. Raven,” he started, his voice having the echoing timbre of a tiger’s growl - the deep rumble that made a person’s skin crawl. “You have grown.”   
“Yes, well,” Rachel said, unable to keep the spite out of her tone, “children tend to do that when left unattended with water and sunlight.”   
Trigon laughed again, making Rachel shudder. “Funny as well. You get that from me.”   
There was a momentary pause. “So,” Rachel began, “what now? Do I sell my soul to you for an oh-so-important wish that you use to screw me over anyway?”   
Trigon’s smile grew wider, making his eyes bulge. Rachel looked away. “Oh, my dear, sweet, daughter. How naive your mother has left you. I do not plan on making half-baked crossroad devil deals... I plan to take over entire universes, become the omnipotent god all the stories and religions praised me to be. And you, Raven, will exist to serve me.”   
And with apparently nothing else left to say, the demon god dissolved into tendrils of   
smoke and burst through the ceiling of Rachel’s basement with a thunderous force. Rachel fell   
flat on her back, debris and dust falling around her as she stared at the gaping hole in her   
home, wondering what kind of horror she had released into the world.


	5. Chapter 5

“What in hell have you done?”   
Rachel coughed, squinting as the dust began clearing. She twisted her body, wincing in pain as she turned to see her mother standing at the door of the basement. It was odd to see her in such a different emotional state. Her anger and spite weren’t fully gone, but horror had taken priority on her face. Before Rachel could say anything, the woman spoke again. “You brought him back,” she said, her voice quivering in a manner that Rachel had never seen before. “You brought him into this world without binding him. Without creating a protection circle.”   
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rachel said, but her mother didn’t seem to even register her response.   
“He’s out there, isn’t he? You let him go free. You foolish, stupid girl.” There was the anger again. Her mother’s face twisted. “Don’t you know what you’ve done?” she screamed. “We’re all going to die - this city will be under his control first, then he’ll take the world! He’ll kill everyone if he has to.” She sunk to the floor, holding onto the door frame for support.   
Rachel shook her head. “He’s my father,” she said aloud, not quite believing it herself as she said it. “My father,” she sucked on the words, feeling their bitter, coarse taste. That monstrous mountain of red, with his demonic eyes and booming low voice, pure existential horror personified, was her blood. She was his daughter.   
She looked back at her mother, seeing the blood drain out of her face. Rachel laughed in disbelief. “You had sex with a demon? I knew you were demented but this is a new low, even for you.”   
“Don’t talk to me like that,” her mother said, almost reflexively, as there was no bite behind the words. She knew what Rachel knew - she’d lost the battle, and the war. There were no more cards in her hand; they were all splayed out on the table for Rachel to see. And there was nothing her mother could do about it.   
Rachel stood up, grabbing the leatherbound book and shoving it towards her mother’s face. “Explain this. Why do you have this? Why did you summon him?” She took a deep breath.   
“Why did you have me?”   
Rachel’s mother clenched her jaw. “I didn’t want you, you little brat. You were collateral damage. An unintended consequence of a mistake.”   
“Sounds like the story of many children,” Rachel said. “Why a demon?”   
The other woman folded her arms, clearly annoyed at being interrupted but knowing she was unable to do anything about it. “I wanted revenge. And I got it.” A creeping smile spread across her face, her eyes glinting. “I would have been free of that shit house if you didn’t rear your ugly head.”   
Rachel pressed on, ignoring the insult. “What do you mean by revenge? Who did you want revenge on?”   
“It is funny that I never told you,” her mother continued over her. “Your grandparents mysteriously died horrible, slow deaths. Grandpa Wallace got stuck in a chimney - God knows how that happens - and slowly roasted until he was cooked. And Grandma Mary followed soon after, you know. Well, I assume she died. They buried her while she was still breathing.”   
Rachel recoiled. “You murdered your parents.”   
“They deserved it,” Her mother hissed. “They were foul human beings. Used me as cattle. I was called a cow so often I forgot my own damn name halfway through childhood. Your father was a blessing... until you came along.”   
“You’re disgusting. So were your parents - but that doesn’t excuse how horrible you are.”   
Rachel shook her head. “I can’t believe I’m related to all-” she gestured at the room around her, the falling-in ceiling, the dim, yellow lighting over the stained carpeting, the boxes strewn all around, containing secrets that could destroy worlds, “this.”   
“It’s your destiny to be just as fucked up as the rest of us,” her mother chuckled darkly.   
“I’m sure he told you that already.”   
“So it’s true then,” Rachel said softly. “I’m meant to serve him.” Trigon’s last words haunted her to no end, piercing into her heart. It was strange hearing him say it. Somehow they’d felt all wrong and also terrifyingly accurate at the same time. She knew why. Deep in her soul, that black hole still existed, calling out to whatever dark purpose it served. Rachel’s strange powers weren’t truly hers. They had a higher purpose - one that she wasn’t sure she could escape.   
“You’re a demonic, evil child,” Rachel’s mother said matter-of-factly. “Your only destiny from the beginning was to become a pawn in his plan.”   
“The price of the deal... that was me?”   
“And what a horrible price to pay. I would have been better off killing them myself and just taking the life sentence in jail.” Rachel’s mother looked up at Rachel - really looked at her, for what felt like, to Rachel, the first time. “You wanted to leave. Shit, do it. I’m not going to stop you. Go wherever you need to. Just take this evil out of my house.”   
The words should have been a relief to Rachel, an easy escape from her abusive household, a final respite from this woman who had tortured her incessantly. But as her mother walked back up the stairs, her shoulders slumped, all she could feel was a gut-wrenching fear.   
***   
Lightning cracked the sky in two, lighting up the cityscape that Rachel tread slowly towards. She pulled her dark purple hoodie up around her head, shivering as a stiff breeze struck her. There was a storm on its way - perhaps fitting to the situation at hand. Wherever Trigon was, he was surely stewing up trouble and strife, biding his time to gain back his full power. In the short time period that Rachel had before she’d fully been kicked out of the house, she’d tore through the book, reading everything she could about Trigon and hoping there would be some kind of failsafe to bind him back into his dimension. But the more she read, the more scared she became. The monster had every kind of supernatural power that Rachel could think of. From mind control and elemental powers to transformation ability and warping reality - the list just seemed to go on. She didn’t even know where to start in finding him, let alone defeating his evil plan.   
These were the thoughts that churned in Rachel’s mind as she walked through the quiet city streets, armed with little more than a backpack of clothes, her barely functional cellphone, a wad of cash she’d saved up for five years, and a homemade handbook for summoning demons. Rachel assumed that the last one wouldn’t get her too much at a pawn shop. As another blast of cold, unforgiving air hit her, she realized Trigon had to wait. Her first order of business was finding somewhere to sleep. Preferably, somewhere with an awning or tent. The overcast sky and ever so often claps of thunder didn’t sound promising for her first night on the streets.   
There were several streets of shops with small patios and rooftops, but they were either already occupied by other people on the streets, or manned by guards that didn’t seem to take too kindly to wandering strangers. Everywhere she turned, people seemed to be antagonizing each other. A couple stood at the street corner, arguing loudly. A security officer near the shopping center yelled loudly at a group of teenagers who scattered, brushing past Rachel as they ran away. Next to her, another teenager kicked a homeless man, grabbing his pack and running away with it, whooping at a group of his friends as the homeless man screamed obscenities. When he caught Rachel looking at the scene, he spit at her, directing his anger towards her. She walked past him quickly, keeping her head down. The same pit she had when she walked through the school hallways grew in her stomach again. Rachel turned the corner into an alley, only to come face to face with another guard. He stood outside the entrance to a seemingly unassuming side door in the alley, his arms folded and a baton clutched in his hand. His brows creased as she locked eyes with him, and he slapped his baton into his other hand menacingly. “Don’t even think about loitering here, kid.” His voice was exactly as she’d expected, gruff and angry, with little sympathy for her plight. “The last thing the boss needs is some more street vagrants near his place of business.”   
“Place of business?” The door behind the guard looked like a rusty service door, something that an electrician or plumber would use to easily get in and out of a business. What kind of strange business operated out of a shadowy alley way?   
The guard huffed as she walked past him, and Rachel felt a chill make its way down her back. Her stomach began to grumble and groan angrily, making her realize she’d skipped every meal of the day. Groaning, Rachel looked around for somewhere cheap and fast, and settled on a small cafe whose light was still on. Cautiously, she approached it, checking to see if the cheery We’re Open! sign was to be trusted. As she peeked inside, Rachel’s mouth began to water. There was a display of every kind of pastry, all lit up and deliciously arranged. The pang in her stomach confirmed that it had been a bad idea to even look - it was clear she couldn’t afford anything inside the patisserie without being reckless with the little money she had. Now she had an empty stomach and an aching craving for the food inside.   
Rachel sighed, settling down under the patio of the cafe in the dimly lit street. Rachel took off her backpack, leaning into it and using it as a pillow. Sadly, she didn’t own a sleeping bag to bring out, and there was only so much cold her ratty old hoodie could stop. Completely ready to call it quits and steel herself for a hungry, cold, painful night on the curb, Rachel flinched when she heard the gentle ringing of a bell behind her.   
“Hungry?” A voice said.   
Rachel scrambled to her feet with a jolt, turning to see what she could only describe as the human representation of the Pillsbury Doughboy. The man before her was stout and rather short, his height reaching a few inches taller than her. His chef’s hat, pristinely white just like the rest of his uniform, rose high into the air, giving the illusion of height. He clasped his hands together, smiling at Rachel. “No worries, I have just the thing.”   
She balked. “I, uh - no, I don’t have any money.”   
The baker laughed. It was jolly and light, severely out of place in the dark, shadowy back streets of the city. “I do not expect a child in need to give me money. I’m not a monster. But I do have leftovers from the display that will be discounted or thrown away in the morning. Do you have a craving for a banana muffin?” His voice was light, slightly accented. It made Rachel feel lighter, like a burden had been lifted from her shoulders.   
“It’s really alright-” she began, but the deep, guttural sounds of her growling stomach seemed to heavily oppose her.   
The baker just smiled softly, ushering her inside from the cold. “I am Ivan,” he said, with   
a hint of pride.   
“Ivan of Ivan’s Bakery,” Rachel said, and at his happy nod, she replied, “I’m Rachel.” She stepped into the bakery, smiling as the soft golden light and the wafting saccharine aroma of the baked goods surrounded her.   
“Sit, please,” Ivan urged.   
Rachel obliged, her nerves still running high. Her hand gripped the straps of her backpack tight, holding it close to her body. The deep green walls of the bakery were decorated with pictures of people smiling - some of them likely patrons from over the years - but there were repeating images of the same two women in many of the photos. Upon closer inspection, one of the women seemed to grow older, from a teenager to an adult, as the pictures progressed.   
There was the sound of a plate scraping across the wooden counter, and Rachel jumped back from the wall, turning to see Ivan leaning over the countertop.   
“Your family?” she asked, tentatively taking one of the muffins on the plate.   
He sighed heavily. “Yes. My wife and daughter. They are sadly no longer with me. Lost during the attacks in Gotham by that madman.”   
Rachel swallowed a bite of the muffin thickly, suddenly regretting bringing up the subject.   
“I’m so sorry,” she said.   
“Evil steals too much from this world.” His words pierced through Rachel’s heart, almost as if they were meant exactly for her - though whether they were a warning or an admonition, she could not tell. The image of Trigon, still burned into her mind, consumed her thoughts again. There was no telling what his plan was, where he was heading now, what he planned on using Rachel for. Her mother’s words rang in her ears - your only destiny from the beginning was to become a pawn in his plan. Evil coursed through her veins, and Rachel wasn’t sure there was a way for her to escape it.   
The baker took out a hand towel and began to wipe down the counter, his hand sweeping across the table and his face locked in concentration for this task. “Why do you think it happens?” She blurted out, then clarified, “Evil, I mean.”   
He gave her a pensive look, pausing his cleaning. “I think it’s a choice. It happens when we stop thinking about what can happen if we do something.”   
“The consequences.”   
“Precisely. We must care about the consequences.” He looked back at Rachel, throwing the towel back over his shoulder. “May I ask a question of my own?” At Rachel’s nod, he continued, “Why do you have no home? Are you a runaway?”   
“Sort of,” Rachel admitted. “My alcoholic mother kicked me out after trying to sell me off to her debt collector.” She bit back the rest of the story - the part where she crushed a man’s hand with no effort, the part where she summoned an ancient eldritch horror, the part where her mother, a woman who had matched every criteria for most evil woman in existence, had looked at her with fear. Even thinking about it made her stomach churn.   
“I am sorry, too,” Ivan replied, his voice low but full of sincerity. “Evil is far too often in our own homes. Where we should feel most safe.”   
Rachel gave him a weak smile, the guilt in her conscience only rising. She wondered if the old man would offer her the same kindness if he knew the truth. She jumped off the stool.   
“Thanks for the muffins. They were the best meal I’ve had in... months.” Years might have been more accurate. She didn’t remember having a meal out of such kindness since she’d stayed at Kori’s house almost two years ago in the beginning of high school. It was a nice change to not have to worry about her mother’s angry, drug-induced rants and physical abuse in the middle of a meal.   
As Rachel reached for the door handle, Ivan called out again. “Rachel! Stay in here for the night.”   
She turned to face him, disbelieving. “Are you sure? What if I was a serial killer or a thief or something?”   
Ivan waved his hand in dismissal. “I don’t believe a thief would ask me that question. Besides, if you wanted to rob or murder an old, out-of-shape pastry man, you could have done it by now.” He patted her lightly on the shoulder and headed out the door.   
As he turned out the light and locked the door of the bakery behind him, Rachel’s eyes welled up with tears, looking out at the baker’s retreating figure. For all the kind people in the world, and for all of humanity that deserved to live on, she would defeat Trigon and save the world. Whatever it took.   
The pitter pattering sounds of light rain lulled her, and Rachel finally closed her heavy eyes and entered into a slightly less fitful bout of sleep.   
***   
Rachel jolted awake to the sound of glass shattering. Her eyes took a moment to adjust in the darkness of the bakery. Breathing hard, she clutched her bag and took in her surroundings, ready to use it as a weapon against whatever was ready to attack her.   
But the bakery was silent. For a moment, Rachel wondered if what she’d heard had actually been another nightmare, but then she heard the sound of yelling coming from outside. As she crept towards the window, taking care to make sure her shoes didn’t make a sound, she noticed the spattering of glass shards on the ground around her. Rachel scanned the area for the offending item, but there was nothing else on the ground - no brick, no bullet, nothing that could have pierced the glass.   
There was the crackling sound of electricity in the air, and then a blast of purple light rocketed towards her. Rachel ducked, screaming as the back of the bakery exploded in a fiery blast. When she looked back, there was nothing remaining but charred walls and wooden debris. She only had a moment to think Poor Ivan , before there was another blast that broke down the door.   
Rachel scrambled to her feet, inching towards the wall. A male figure stood at the door, his fists balled up, glowing spheres of energy forming around them. His face was shrouded by a dark hood, and the only other thing that was visible from the faint glow of a streetlight from the next block was his ratty old jeans. Rachel couldn’t make out much more in the dark, but as he turned his head to look at her, shel could see the glint of his teeth in his sinister grin.   
“You thought you could get away, didn’t you?” he asked, his voice a low rumble, almost indecipherable. It didn’t sound like the normal voice of a human, more like someone had turned on a voice modulator. “Nice try, but rather futile.” He let out a low, sickening laugh. “I will be everywhere.”   
Before she had time to register these words, the man hurled another blast at her. Rachel tried to duck in time, but cried out in pain as the energy pierced through her shoulder, singeing her skin. Her whole arm felt like it was tingling, like the current from the attack was entering her own nervous system, powering her.   
She lunged behind a counter, narrowly avoiding another one of his throws of light. “Who are you? What do you want with me?”   
He didn’t answer, offering her nothing more than another laugh. Rachel stared down at her hand, which was now oozing black vapors, the same kind Trigon had been made out of. It looked like an omen of death, and she fought the rising panic inside as she looked at it. Had Trigon somehow infected her, caused this to happen? Had he used this man to track her down and kill her - and then take over the rest of the city...and world?   
There was a thunderous crash, startling Rachel out of her stupor. She peeked out from behind the counter, only to see the figure lying limp in the pile of debris, groaning in pain. Another man stood near the door - no, not a man... a superhero? Rachel blinked in disbelief, staring at his image. His cape was flying in the breeze, and he wore tights and boots that were almost knee-high. He was almost regal in his appearance.   
His gaze met Rachel’s. “Stay back there!” The man called out to her, striding over to the hooded figure who had tried to attack her and grabbing his collar. He lifted the figure up, almost effortlessly, and slammed him back down into the debris. The man let out a gasp of pain and then slumped backward. Rachel’s breath hitched, and the man in the cape looked back at her.   
“What- who are you?”   
“We need to get you out of here,” the man said instead of answering her, grabbing her arm and hoisting her up. They walked together to the door - mostly, it was him dragging her behind him, not even stopping to give an explanation. “My apartment isn’t far from here.” Rachel shoved him away from her, instinctively. Nausea built in the pits of her stomach, compounded only by all the hits she had taken over the course of the day. She wasn’t sure who she could trust, who wasn’t trying to kill her. Her head spun as she tried to make sense of it all, and she grabbed onto the door frame to steady herself. Not a smart move for someone trying not to appear weak in front of someone who could possibly kill you. she thought, mentally kicking herself for it. But then another wave of nausea hit her and she tightened her grip on the frame. “I’m not coming anywhere until you tell me who you are,” she managed to get out. With her head still spinning, Rachel grabbed her backpack, the contents of which had been strewn haphazardly across the floor of the bakery. She groped around for the book.   
“Rachel-” The man stopped himself, stepping away and turning his face away from her.   
“Look, I’m here to help you.” He grabbed the book and handed it to her.   
Rachel’s eyes narrowed at his clear slip-up. “How do you know who I am? Who are you? Who was he?” She looked back at her attacker, who was still out cold, then turned to face the strange hero again. In the dim moonlight, she could finally make out his strong jawline and carefully chiseled face, almost like his cheekbones were sculpted. His dark black hair was messy, only held in place by the restraining band of the mask that covered his eyes. A glimmer of recognition lit up in Rachel’s mind as he began to speak.   
“There’s no time to explain. There’s probably more of those guys on their way, so I need you to come with me.”   
“Then you can take me fighting, asshole,” she spat out, knowing that in her state, he could likely easily take her. She steeled herself for the inevitability of getting knocked out one last time before this dreadful night was over.   
Before the masked man could punch her lights out and kidnap her to bring to his evil lair - or whatever he planned on doing - there was another loud crash behind them. Rachel immediately seized up, darting her gaze to the source. Her heart jumped into her throat. Another hooded figure walked towards them, shrouded in the shadows next to an overturned car. They let out what Rachel could only describe as a roar and grabbed the car next to them, lifting it over their head as if it weighed nothing.   
“Shit,” was all she could say before the masked man grabbed her arm and jerked her out of the door frame. They ran down the street, and Rachel felt her heart jump as the deafening sound of a car crashing down on the sidewalk across from them shook the whole street.   
“This is why I said we needed to leave!”   
“Well can’t you fly or something?” Rachel yelled over the noise of a symphony of car alarms.   
She couldn’t see his eyes clearly, but she could tell the hero was looking at her like she was nuts. “I can’t fly!” He pulled her into another side alley and proceeded to begin to climb over the chain link fence at the end of it with remarkable speed and accuracy. Even though he apparently was flightless, his skills in parkour more than made up for it.   
“Then what the hell is the cape for?” Rachel threw back, hoisting herself up over the fence with obvious struggle. The man groaned and she yelped as she lost her grip at the top of the fence and fell unceremoniously onto the other side. Groaning, she got back onto her feet, ready to start running again she saw his eyes widen in fear, his gaze trained behind her.   
“What-” Rachel began to ask, but her question was answered by the feeling of a gut punch to her back, knocking her off her feet once more and sending her into a convulsion. She coughed, blood and some horrific black substance spewing out of her. When Rachel’s vision cleared, she looked up to see the masked hero fighting off two more hooded figures, their bodies crackling with the same energy that the one from the bakery had used for his energy blasts. Speaking of which...   
She twisted her body to see the attacker from the bakery jump down from the fence and stalk towards her. He balled his hands into fists again and rubbed them against each other, almost as if he was charging up those devices that television doctors used to bring patients back to life. The electric charge between his hands began to build as Rachel dragged her body away from him.   
“Uh... mask man? Now would be a good time to land a punch!” she called out. She received no response other than grunts and occasional screams of pain as he continued to fight off the men behind her.   
“Looks like your knight in shining armor’s a bit preoccupied,” the attacker said, his voice still a disturbing amalgamation of Trigon’s low demonic rumble and a normal human’s voice.   
“What do you want from me?” Rachel hated how her voice sounded - weak and terrified, not even a threat in the attacker’s eyes, probably. “Did - is Trigon behind this?”   
He didn’t answer. Not that Rachel should be surprised by this outcome, as it seemed that no one bothered to answer her questions anymore. The attacker stood over her and pushed his hands forward, administering what should have been a lethal current of electricity to her body.   
But instead of dying of shock, something strange happened to Rachel. Her body began to take in the electricity, like before, but this time it began to build. The gaping black hole she had felt in her soul earlier was back, but it was slowly being filled by the purple pulsing current of energy, building and taking form inside her. As she absorbed it, Rachel sat up, and could feel her hands ball up into fists too, felt the black vapors turn into an oozing substance that squeezed out of her palms and landed on the ground beneath her. They hit it with a sizzle, like acid, burrowing into the sand.   
She reached her left hand out towards a nearby trash can, willing it forward with her mind, allowing the black tendrils to take control over her motor reflexes. They grabbed the trash can for her, raising it into the air and slamming it into the attacker. He tumbled to the ground, and Rachel willed him towards her, forcing the tendrils to wrap around his form and drag his trembling body across the ground. He struggled against her pull, only causing her resolve to strengthen and the black tendrils to tighten.   
“You can fly?” she heard the voice of the masked hero, calling from far away. Perplexed, Rachel gasped as she looked back down at him - almost 30 feet away on the ground. In shock, she lost her concentration, feeling the grip she had on the attacker and the stability she had in the air falter, and then completely give away, and they both fell to the ground.   
The hooded figure’s body landed squarely on the chain link fence, crumpling on impact like a rag doll. Rachel looked behind her to see the other two figures tied up, struggling against their bounds, but clearly alive, and felt vomit rise in her throat again. Before she could lay her head back down in the dirt, try to stop her body from hurling out all of her internal organs, she felt a pair of strong arms wrap around her, picking her up by the torso.   
She screamed immediately, trying to push herself away, punching at whatever agent of her demon king father was trying to kill or kidnap her this time.   
“Hey, hey!” The masked man dropped her back onto the ground, backing away. “Geez, relax. It’s just me. I thought you were passed out too.”   
The moon came out from behind the clouds, streaming bright white light over the man’s face. Rachel squinted up at him, coming to the realization that his mask had fallen off somewhere during the fight. She felt her heart nearly stop.   
“Dick.. Dick Grayson?”   
His face immediately contorted as he reached his hands up, only to find it completely exposed. His jaw clenched. “Shit.”   
There were so many more questions spinning in Rachel’s head, so many more things she wanted to say, but as the nausea and lack of blood sugar finally caught up with her, all she could do was mumble out “What the hell?” before her eyes rolled back into her head and, against her will, Rachel blacked out for the second time in 24 hours.


	6. Chapter 6

The vortex of death was back, and Rachel was in the center of it. The winds around her spun faster than she could keep up with, picking up everything from cars to street lights and signs, the debris rotating dangerously close to her.   
She was in the eye of the storm. Rachel tried to step out, into the vortex - maybe to die, to end this nightmare quickly. She wasn’t even sure what that would mean for her in the real world, but at this point, she was desperate for release from this hell. But no matter what Rachel did to try and step forward or crawl out of the center, the winds seemed to somehow adjust to fight against her, their force greater than any strength she could muster up to defeat them.   
As Rachel continued to fight anyway, her heart sunk as she felt a familiar towering presence take form behind her.   
“Raven. My disciple... my protege! How I love to see your powers fester and grow into even a fraction of what they soon will become. We shall be a great team, daughter.”   
Rachel turned to see the demon king in all his glory. Somehow, while the rest of the dream felt as hazy and out of focus as it always did, Trigon was in high definition, his glowing red eyes piercing into Rachel’s soul. There were a million things she could ask him in this moment - even though she wasn’t sure whether this dream Trigon was the real thing, or some figment of her mind’s unrelenting imagination. “Why do you call me Raven?” is all she could settle on, however.   
Trigon’s smile widened. It was an appraising, calculating expression - like the look a tiger gave its prey before it swallowed it whole. “Your mother chose to hide your true name from you. Perhaps a pathetic attempt at trying to thwart fate, as if this lack of knowledge would somehow prevent your destiny to fall.”   
“My birth certificate says Rachel,” she countered weakly. “What does it matter what you named me? What you choose my destiny to be?”   
“Ah, yes. The interdimensional, all-encompassing power of the human birth certificate.” Trigon chucked coarsely. “I did not name you Raven, for the record. It was a name already given. Just as your destiny was. And just as my destiny to bring universal order was... through mass destruction, of course.”   
A creeping dread filled Rachel as her father spoke - the dread of knowing that her life was out of her hands and that what she’d started could not be stopped by any means. She’d always known she was a screw-up, but bringing about literal armageddon? That was probably a new low for her.   
“Oh, don’t be so pessimistic about it, Raven.” Trigon said, somehow replying to her. Raven let out a high pitched utterance as she raised a hand to her head, watching her father simply laugh. “Yes, I can read your thoughts. You can do it too, if you would just apply yourself.   
Being the daughter of the future king of every universe does have its perks, you know.”   
Fury rose from deep inside of Raven. “I am not your daughter. And you will be king of nothing as long as I’m alive to see it.”   
“Funny. I thought all little girls dreamed of being princesses.”   
“That ship sailed ten years ago, and you weren’t there to see it.” The winds around Raven started picking up in speed, their endless whistling making it hard to see or hear. It was the way all of her nightmares ended, she realized - all of them, somehow connected to Trigon. The vortex closed in and the demon in front of her disappeared into it, his fiery eyes the last thing to leave her field of vision.   
“Trust me when I tell you, Trigon, that I will destroy you,” Raven muttered as she felt her body give way again, bracing herself for her impending slip out of consciousness “If it’s the last thing I do...” she finished with her last breath.   
***   
Rachel woke up with a gentle start, uncharacteristic for her usual knockout induced nightmare-filled sleeps. What was more strange, her head felt fine for probably incurring more than a few concussions. Even when she pressed her hand against the spot where her mother had hit her earlier, there was no pain, only the slight sensation of pressure. Maybe she had somehow lost the ability to feel pain - knocked out some kind of crucial nerve ending or part of the brain that was responsible for that sensation.   
Her gaze turned to her surroundings - a pristine, white bedroom, with all the shades open. Sunlight streamed in through the floor to ceiling windows, leading out into a glistening cityscape. Rachel crouched over the edge of the bed, looking down, then immediately pulling back from the windows, trying to hold back the nausea and vertigo. They were - she couldn’t even decipher what floor of a building she could possibly be on - extremely high up. Briefly, Rachel entertained the idea that she was in heaven, or some other afterlife equivalent to it. Then, she heard a loud crash and the sound of a man’s loud groan from the other room, breaking the illusion. Unless angels were clumsy, angry men.   
She got out of the bed, placing her feet on the ground tentatively before placing weight on them. Rachel could only vaguely recall the pain she was in before she’d passed out last night, but it was enough that she knew she couldn’t have been completely okay now. Somehow, though, she felt completely fine, standing and walking around with basically no problem. She almost felt better than she had before she’d gotten all banged up yesterday. Maybe better than she’d felt in a long time.   
She was still in her ratty hoodie and jeans, which were fully scraped up and soiled with blood and dirt. Still, probably better than half of her wardrobe. Rachel checked herself for bruises and scrapes all over her body, but there were little more than faded scars in the places she’d gotten hurt earlier. She swallowed thickly. It made no sense. None of it made any sense - not the past day, not last night, not her nightmares (or trips to alternate dimensions, as she now realized they were more likely to be), and now, not even her own body.   
Rachel walked out into the living room, looking around in awe. When she had been six years old, her mother had temporarily gotten a real adult job and moved them into the best place Rachel had ever lived. The apartment was probably in one of the worst parts of town, and she was sure there were shootings and homicides going on every night, but that crappy studio had been a kind of luxury Rachel wasn’t used to. It had working faucets, and even floors that weren’t completely littered with every kind of snack food, piles of used condoms, and the stench of alcohol that somehow never left carpeting. It was a sort of heaven, and since then, Rachel had promised herself she would move back into an apartment like that the moment she graduated from high school and could afford it.   
This apartment was nothing like what she had dreamed of. There were, inexplicably, two whole floors in the single room, a whole wall covered completely with windows, a large flat screen TV literally implanted into the wall, and the kind of post-modern furniture she associated with Star Trek spaceships.   
“Holy shit.” Her voice carried through the arched ceilings, echoing against the seemingly cavernous walls of the apartment. Although, she wondered, could it even be considered an apartment at this point?   
There was another crash of pots coming from the other room - what Rachel safely assumed to be the kitchen, and Dick Grayson walked out into the doorway between the two rooms. “You’re awake? You’re awake!” He yelled.   
Rachel felt herself flinch in response to his rather loud enthusiasm. “This is your place?”   
She vaguely remembered Kori complaining to her about Dick’s reluctance to ever invite her over (and, consequently, her three-hour analysis session in which she went over every scenario about why he didn’t like her as more than a friend and never would, despite the numerous dates he’d asked her out on). Rachel had assumed that he’d lived like her - in squalor, in what was more of a shack than a house - and was just too embarrassed to let Kori into that part of his life. Not that it would have made a difference to Kori at all, as accepting and loving as a person she was, but Rachel understood the comfort that sometimes came with hiding a part of your life away from other people. Like if you didn’t discuss it, it simply didn’t exist. But why hide an expensive, luxury apartment?   
“What? Yeah,” Dick replied dismissively to her question, then looked at her in disbelief. “Geez, Rachel, I thought you were going to die for a minute there. Didn’t know how I was going to explain that one to your mom.”   
She laughed bitterly, almost as a reflex, then caught herself before he asked for an explanation for the odd response. “So,” she began slowly, “you’re a superhero.”   
“Hardly.” Dick disappeared behind the kitchen wall again, and Rachel followed him, not ready to drop the conversation.   
“Right, the cape and mask outfit and punching out the bad guys is just supposed to be some advanced training for MMA club?” she challenged.   
He chuckled. “I meant that I’m more of a... freelance worker.”   
“Vigilante.” Rachel mused, “You don’t strike me as the solo type.”   
“Really. The brooding, awkward persona at school didn’t give you a hint?”   
“Oh, please, you are nowhere near brooding. You’re literally one of the most popular guys at our school!”   
Dick grimaced, as if the notion of high school popularity and politics was foreign to him - which made sense, Rachel realized, if fighting crime and superpowered masked attackers was his side job. “People at school like me because I’m some idealized version of a tough guy stereotype that does nothing but perpetuate the violence and anger we already see so much of.   
People see what they want to see in me.” He flipped a pancake.   
Rachel blinked, stunned into silence. After another flip of the pancake, Dick sighed and continued. “Anyway. Sometimes I think Kori is the only one who ever sees another side of me. A side that isn’t just punching dummies in the weight gym until they break.”   
Rachel softened. “She really likes you too, you know. Even if she’s terrible at saying it sometimes... most of the time.” The thought of her best friend - and all the time she’d spent apart from her by this point - made her heart ache slightly.   
Dick smiled slightly at this assertion, dumping the pancakes onto two plates and drizzling syrup onto one of them. He held out the bottle to Rachel. “Want any?”   
“You made me pancakes?” She took the syrup, taking care to drizzle very little onto the second plate. Rachel already felt bad enough for taking up Dick’s time with her demonic misadventures. A chill ran down her spine as the memories from her nightmares flashed in her memory again.   
“Figured your blood sugar was low after that fight.” Dick shrugged, bringing both plates to the table. He eyed her lack of syrup. “You know you can take more, right? Unless you’re a weirdo who likes syrup-less pancakes.”   
Rachel rolled her eyes, taking the bottle from him again. “Do you always pair homemade breakfasts with insults?”   
“Yes,” Dick deadpanned. “But only after daring rescues in the middle of the night.”   
Rachel bit into the cakes, savoring their sweet flavor, only compounded by the cloying taste of syrup. Her mother had never let her break into anything sweet, often giving Rachel nothing more than oatmeal for lunch and ‘encouraging’ her to find her own food past that. School days were spent eating at school but every other day was a challenge to find anything edible that wasn’t random club snacks. “This is amazing,” she said happily.   
“Thanks. It's nice to know I do have more talents than parkour.”   
“And following the recipe from the back of a pancake mix box is one of them.”   
They ate in silence for a few minutes, Rachel taking a moment to just focus on the fact that she had real food. The last few days had been unquestionably awful, and the dread that filled her stomach when she thought about the destruction that would probably follow didn’t necessarily calm her down. But, for now, even with the inevitable destruction of the world by her absentee demon father, she felt she deserved to enjoy the pancakes.   
After a moment of quiet enjoyment, Rachel finally broke the silence. “About last night, then,” she began. Dick shook his head.   
“You mean two nights ago.”   
“Wait, what?”   
“You were out for almost 48 hours. I thought you were going to die for the first eight but then,” Dick paused, drumming his fingers against the table, his brows furrowed and gaze looking past Rachel. “I don’t know. You just started...coming back online.” “Back online?” Rachel asked, thoroughly confused now.   
“Literally, in a way. It was bizarre. I mean, look-” He reached over, pushing slightly into her shoulder - the one that had been hit by the first blast. Rachel moved back reflexively, but didn’t feel any pain in the area, just like earlier. “You had at least three broken ribs when I hauled you out of that alley. Now it’s like you were never even touched by a fly, let alone beat up by four superpowered criminals.   
“Right,” Rachel said softly, bringing a hand up to her torso, where she’d felt the current build up, where she knew that black hole was.   
“So, how long have you had healing powers?” Dick asked.   
Rachel tried not to look taken aback. It was weird to think of all these strange changes that were happening to her as powers. Like she was some sort of witch. Or, maybe more accurately, some sort of demon. “Um,” she stammered, “Well it’s not really- I don’t think I ever had them before last night. I mean - yesterday night.”   
“Friday night,” Dick corrected gently. “Today is Sunday.”   
“Sunday. My sixteenth birthday.” Rachel suddenly felt her breath become shallow as she remembered the prophecies in the book, the return of her father being foretold once his legacy reached an age of “ripeness”. Whatever that meant - medieval witching books were quiet outdated.   
“Oh. Well, happy birthday. Maybe I should’ve put candles on the pancakes.”   
“Thanks, but it’s been a pretty shitty one anyway. Not one I want to remember.” Rachel grumbled leaning back into her chair. “I could do without these powers.”   
“Speaking of your strange powers. Is that why those guys were after you yesterday? Did you fight someone while using them?”   
“No!” Rachel said. “Of course not. I’m not a vigilante. I literally just woke up one day and,” she gestured with her hands, “I guess I had strange black magic powers.”   
“Right,” Dick said. “And you were out on the street at 3 AM not being a vigilante but being inexplicably chased by superpowered villains because...”   
Rachel’s eyes narrowed at his line of questioning. “Why should I tell you anything? How do I know you don’t hunt down people like me as part of your vigilante work?”   
Dick rolled his eyes. “Come on. If I wanted to hunt you down, I wouldn’t have waited through your two day coma and then made you pancakes. Besides, you know me!”   
“I don’t though, do I?” Rachel countered, standing up. “I thought you were just a normal popular kid who ran the MMA club and had a nice normal life, and it turns out you have a weird whole outfit and a persona and you kill people after dark and you live in this weird large mansion apartment all alone - where are your parents, by the way?”   
There was a beat, and Dick blinked slowly, taking her tirade in. “Okay,” he said, finally. “I get it. You have questions, and assuming you’re telling the truth about just spontaneously getting your powers, you’re probably really disoriented right now.”   
“I’m just really sick of no one answering my questions,” Rachel finished, defeated.   
After a second, Dick sighed. “Well, for starters, Nightwing doesn’t kill people...or I try my best not to. Usually I just fight against immediate crime, temporarily incapacitate the criminals so someone can call the police to let them handle it.”   
Rachel smirked slightly. “Nightwing, huh?”   
“Shut up. It sounded cool when I was thirteen.”   
“Thirteen?” Rachel looked at Dick, slightly in shock. “You’ve been a vigilante since - what   
\- middle school?”   
Dick looked away from her. “Look, the place I come from isn’t like here. I mean, it’s just so much worse. There’s evil around every corner. People trying to murder good people just to make a quick buck. Every institution’s basically just a formally organized crime syndicate with a local government sticker on the front. When I was a kid, my family and I survived as trapeze artists in the city. One bad act, and I lost my parents in what they said was an accident seven years ago. So I left and never looked back.”   
“I’m sorry,” Rachel said. It was all she could say.   
“Anyway,” Dick said. “That explains the lack of parents and the parkour, I guess. And, well, people don’t pay too terribly to make sure their businesses don’t get overrun by the mafia.”   
“So you were just on your nightly mafia patrol on Friday before you just so happened to run into the guys that attacked me? And I got lucky?”   
“Not exactly.” Dick met her gaze, his tone suddenly more measured. “Rachel, I’m going to make a conscious decision to trust you.” “Okay?” Rachel replied, confused.   
“Which means I’m going to tell you the truth about what I think is going on - what I’ve been hunting for the past few days. But it also means that I trust you to tell me the truth if you know anything about it. If you’re in trouble.” At Rachel’s stiff nod, Dick walked over to the large, wall implanted TV and turned it on. Instead of displaying the cable news or Keeping up with the Kardashians, the screen displayed charts and readouts from different measurement devices.   
“What is all this?” Rachel asked.   
“It’s my control center. Of sorts. Vic helped me build a lot of it - told him it was just for advanced gaming and he was sold on it.”   
Vic Stone was the resident computer genius at their high school, the guy who ran the computer club but often sat back in the shadows, probably operating as some kind of high stakes hacker for secret organizations. At least, that’s what Rachel assumed of him every time she tried to have a conversation with the guy. Logan, however, was in awe of him, especially when he fixed his gaming PC for free. Rachel gaped at the complexity of the system. “Vic did this?”   
“Man is a genius,” Dick admitted, opening up one of the readouts. “But this is what I wanted to show you. Friday evening, I got this weird readout from one of my nuclear energy meters. They’re normally supposed to measure for large accumulations of it just in case of a nuclear attack or plant meltdown. There was a spike that evening, but in a place that made no sense - somewhere out in the outskirts of town. Then I started putting my meter on the highest sensitivity, and it detected random spikes all over the city, as if nuclear energy was somehow travelling.”   
Trigon, Rachel’s mind whispered, but she kept quiet as Dick continued.   
“I followed it to that area - the cafe - when I saw you there with that baker. For some reason, the readout wasn’t as high, but there was still a small spike with the same energy signature. So I bid my time, did a bit of a stakeout-” “-not creepy at all,” Rachel groaned.   
“-because it was my only option ,” Dick continued, “and stepped in when those attackers tried to kill you later that night. I grabbed a hair sample from one of them after I tied them up, and strangely, they also have the same signature, but just at a low intensity. Like energy was transferred to them or something.”   
“So this weird nuclear energy is in a lot of people then?” Rachel asked, panic rising in her.   
“That’s just it. I checked your signature again-”   
“Wait, hold on, you took a sample of my hair while I was comatose? Dude, not cool.” Rachel deadpanned.   
Dick sighed. “I know it wasn’t ideal but I needed to figure out where this was coming from. Anyway, your signature right after the fight was through the roof. Almost as strong as the original signal from out in the boonies. I checked a couple more times after that, though, and it slowly leveled out.”   
“Which means I probably just got it from their weird powers, right?”   
“Well you still show the signature, just to a lesser extent. And you had it before the fight too... which is why I think they’re linked with your powers.”   
Rachel bit her lip. “But if I have nuclear energy, shouldn’t you be wearing some kind of shield around me? You know, so you don’t get cancer or something?”   
Dick frowned, looking back at another readout. “Thought of that, but you aren’t actually radioactive. None of the energy is seeping out of you. It’s all contained inside, like you’re a reservoir for it. Almost like you’re a one-woman nuclear plant.”   
“That’s...terrifying.”   
“And extremely powerful. If I knew this and I were the attackers, I would have definitely ran,” Dick said, sounding impressed, if only slightly disturbed by the findings.   
“So what do you think caused that original spike?” Rachel asked tentatively.   
“Nope!” Dick shook his head. “I’ve answered a lot of your questions, so now it’s your turn. Luckily for you, unlike your bombardment of questions, I only have one.”   
Rachel chewed the inside of her cheek, bracing for what was coming. “Ask away!” she replied, plastering a smile onto her face.   
“I need you to tell me,” Dick started, his face complete seriousness. “What was the inciting event for your powers? Did your have any big magical outbursts? Did you level a city? Wreck a forest? Kill someone?” The suggestions sounded bizarre and out of touch, but Dick mentioned them without a trace of a smile or a hint of mirth. Rachel shuddered. Were her powers that bad in his eyes? Did he think her capable of murder? Mass destruction? Trigon sure seemed to think so.   
“Where’s my backpack?” She blurted out. Caught off guard, Dick simply pointed over to the item, which was propped up against the wall and nearly zipped, probably thanks to Dick - which wasn’t a good thing. Rachel rushed over to it and started digging through the contents, only stopping in relief when her hands touched the cool, worn leather on the summoning book.   
“So? Don’t deflect my question. Are you somehow a weapon of mass destruction?”   
“I- what? No! I didn’t do anything. Nothing that could have caused all those weird readings - at least, not to my knowledge.” Rachel felt terrible lying, keeping the truth about Trigon a secret, especially when Dick seemed to genuinely want to help. But now she wasn’t sure she could risk him turning against her when he found out she had demon blood. It was better this way, she reasoned. “Maybe it was some kind of freak nature thing that cause my powers to happn. That’s common, right? Radioactive explosion causing mutant superhumans?”   
Dick laughed darkly. “I’ve seen it once or twice.”   
And the scary part was that Rachel completely believed him.


	7. Chapter 7

When Dick had offered her a ride to school, Rachel had assumed he had an old beater or used minivan - something most of the other kids had. She had been sorely mistaken. Rachel stared at the vehicle in front of her, slightly in shock. She ran her hands over the smooth exterior of the car, the gleaming black coat making it look like it belonged at a fancy nightclub downtown rather than at a high school in a lower middle class neighborhood. Dick caught her gaping and ran a hand through his hair a bit sheepishly.   
“It’s not my usual pick. It’s a bit too flashy,” he explained, as if that was enough to describe the ostentatious nature of the car. “But my older car got wrecked when I was out on a mission earlier this week.”   
Rachel blinked in stunned silence as Dick triggered the passenger door with a simple wave of his hands. The door opened up and out, making the car look less like a car and almost like a spaceship. “Did you raid Elon Musk’s garage or something?”   
He laughed. “Something like that.” This sort of answer was typical with Dick, something Rachel had realized very quickly over the course of the past day that he had a lot of things he wasn’t ready to talk about, and he was good at dodging any questions she had. Rachel could feel that the reason he was acting this way was because he didn’t want her to judge him for his past - her intuition told her that whatever his life had been in Gotham hadn’t been pretty. But it just seemed to work against him, as Rachel’s imagination ran wild. She wondered what he’d been, who he’d worked for. Maybe he had been part of a crime syndicate? Or the henchman of a villain. Or maybe he worked for Joker. Or worse - maybe he was the Joker.   
“Rachel.” His voice coming from the driver's seat - distinctively not sounding anything like a deranged clown - drew her out of her stupor. She turned her gaze towards him. “You getting in?”   
“Oh, uh, yeah.” Rachel said, suddenly feeling guilty for associating Dick, who’d rescued her and been more nice to her through this whole ordeal than many people had been to her in years, with a mass murderer.   
Dick squinted up at the sun as if it had personally wronged him, his hands gripping the steering wheel of the car, leaving slight indents in the leather. Rachel smiled tentatively at him, handing him a coffee cup and his schoolbag. “Not much of a morning person?” she asked.   
He sighed heavily. “It’s just because I stayed up all night. I wanted to make sure I was awake in case there were any more of those weird energy spikes. If I could just figure out the pattern of how they’re happening - why they’re showing up here, now of all times. I know I must be missing something.” Dick’s eyes were almost slits now, and his voice grew louder. “And the more time I can’t figure it out, the more people die.”   
Rachel held her tongue, directing her eyes back down at the school bag on her lap. She could feel the spell book inside nearly burning a hole through the fabric. The longer Rachel stared, she could swear she saw the nightmare inducing face of Trigon, heard the screams of the damned, felt the lapping flames of hell at her feet. But it was less of a threat and more of a siren. Hell itself called out to her, welcomed her as her true home, the burning flames more like a warm hearth.   
Dick drummed his fingers against the dashboard, still in deep thought. Guilt ate away at Rachel, the knowledge of her crime against humanity still fresh in her mind. How do you tell someone Hey, the city that you risk your life every night to protect? I released my supreme demon father into it to wreak havoc. Good luck fighting him!   
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” Rachel said, finally. “You seem like you have the whole superhero vigilante thing under control.”   
Dick huffed. “Hardly.”   
As they pulled up into the school parking lot, Rachel felt herself shrivel up, ducking down below the window and pulling her hoodie around her face so as to block the other students’ view. People gaped at the new ride, crowding them, while trying to keep a safe distance. It was attention that Rachel really didn’t want, especially when all she had on was still her old ratty T-shirt (although thankfully washed of the blood and grime from Friday night) and a purple hoodie. The last thing she needed was Arianna’s well-timed jabs at her outfit and general being this morning.   
Dick didn’t seem to mind the attention, and he drove through the parking lot with the shadow of a smile on his face, any frustration from this morning apparently subsided. Rachel resisted the urge to roll her eyes at his clear enjoyment of the situation. The last few days might have revealed Dick to be a crime-fighting, insanely coordinated machine-like vigilante who took no prisoners, but in high school... he was still a normal popular guy.   
“I’ll pull up around the back. So we get a little less... attention.”   
“Like you care either way,” Rachel said, her biting tone making what was supposed to be a joke come off as more of an attack.   
Dick pursed his lips, ignoring her comment as he pulled into a parking spot and jammed the break. Rachel grimaced - she’d somehow managed to annoy Dick even when he had only been nice to her. And even as she continued to lie to his face about her father and the danger she posed to the world.   
As they got out of the car - Rachel yelping in surprise when the door opened vertically and nearly took her flying with it - her morning only seemed to vow to ruin her day even more. Rachel groaned internally as she saw the familiar locks of vibrant pink hair over the top of the crowd that had formed at the back of the school’s quad. They were approaching towards them fast.   
“Rachel Roth! I have multiple bones to pick with you!” Kori screeched as she marched towards Rachel and Dick, bringing Logan in tow. The other boy winced slightly as Kori’s hand gripped tight around his arm, but Kori didn’t seem to notice as her gaze shifted between Dick and Rachel. “Where have you been?” she asked Dick, then turned to Rachel, “And more important, where have you been? I’ve been calling you, texting you - I even went by your house to see if you were there. Your mom said you ran away?”   
Rachel hesitated, noticing the rapt attention of the crowd of students around them. Dick put his hand on Kori’s shoulder, trying to calm her down. “Kori, look, I can explain-” he began, but the girl shook him off with a fierce anger.   
“No. I’m dealing with you later.” Kori’s eyes trained on Rachel, searching her gaze. Rachel felt the guilt weigh even more heavily on her as she broke away, turning her eyes towards the floor. There wasn’t much said past this - it didn’t need to be said. Rachel’s silence was enough for her best friend. Kori bit her lip, her eyes glassy. “I thought you knew you could tell me anything. Come to me if you needed help.” “I- I do-” Rachel stammered.   
“Then why didn’t you? I thought you died! There was that terrorist attack that night you went to the city, and all those shootings and-” Kori stopped, taking in a shaky breath, “I spent two nights looking through the news for you. Two nights wondering if you died. And you couldn’t give me the benefit of a simple Hey best friend of two years, I’m not DEAD text?”   
There was another sustained silence, and Kori sighed, shaking her head. “Whatever. I’m going to class. Neither of you follow me.” Kori turned her heel, bringing Logan with her, back into the crowd.   
Before Rachel could call out after her friend, apologize, beg for forgiveness, she heard a cackling laughter coming from behind her. Arianna stood against the hood of her car - the only other one in the school that rivaled Dick’s. It’s bright red sheen only helped to accentuate her acerbic attitude and almost cartoonish evil. “Poor little raven,” she said with a Cheshire smile, her teeth glinting in the sunlight, “not a good look to sleep with your best friend's man, is it?”   
Rachel barely registered what Arianna had insinuated before Dick sprung to action, almost tackling Arianna as he towered over her. “Listen, you bitch, I would never-”   
Arianna pouted, pushing Dick away from her before he could finish. “You wouldn’t stoop so low as to punch a girl, would you, Dick? Unless you really want to live up to your name.” “Haven’t heard that one before,” Dick muttered sarcastically.   
Arianna simply hummed, picking up her designer purse and slinging it effortlessly over her shoulder. “Whatever. I’m not trying to get involved in whatever this incestuous spat is anyway. I trust you three will figure it out.” She winked. “Maybe you’ll come to a compromise, even?”   
“Excuse me?” Rachel sputtered out, disgust curdling inside her. “Why would you ever- I don’t even-”   
Arianna raised an eyebrow. “Well. It was just a suggestion anyway. Ciao.” She shrugged, waving a dismissive hand over her shoulder as she sauntered into the school building.   
Dick’s hands were still balled up into fists as he watched her stalk off. Rachel sighed.   
“Welcome to the world of being antagonized by everyone in school.”   
“What?”   
Rachel smirked, despite herself, shrugging as he followed her through the swarm of students, who thankfully now seemed more interested in their phones than in the drama around them. “It’s what happens when you start associating yourself with me. Although I’m sure you’ve never been bullied before, Mr. Nominated-For-Prom-King-Every-Year.”   
Dick rolled his eyes. “You clearly know nothing about me.”   
“Well I would.” Rachel retorted. “If you didn’t dodge every question I asked that even slightly mentioned your past.”   
“Look, whatever. I just need your help to figure out whatever the hell is going on with those signatures. After that, if you hate my popular guts so much, you can decide to never speak to me again.” Dick slammed his locker shut, the sound echoing through the hall. He winced, looking back at the now slightly crooked door hinge. Rachel felt irritation bubble up in her as Dick refused to meet her eyes. After the fight with Kori - and perhaps, by extension,   
Logan, dealing with Dick’s unspoken issues was the last thing she wanted to do. Every time he mentioned the energy signatures, her mind jumped back to Trigon’s face in the dimly lit basement, his unblinking fiery red eyes and smile like a tiger who had just found its prey.   
“I need to get to class,” Rachel grumbled, grabbing her books and, after a moment's hesitation, deciding to leave the spellbook in her locker. There was a part of her, a sinking feeling in her gut, that knew it was probably a bad idea to leave ancient powers of destruction lying around in an easily openable school locker, but the thought of bringing it to class also made her stomach churn. It was almost like a mental block - like if Rachel left the book in here, it meant that she didn’t have to deal with the consequences of her actions.   
Dick nodded stiffly. “I guess I’ll see you after school. Don’t be late - I need you in the   
lab.”   
Rachel sighed, closing her locker before she walked away, not giving Dick the benefit of an answer. Another thing she didn’t want to think about - being a human guinea pig. Dick had emphasized the importance of finding out where the signal had been coming from, what it meant, and what they had to do with her powers. To be completely fair, Rachel wanted to know these things too. It was probably better that she got whatever strange supernatural abilities she had under control as soon as possible - at least, before Trigon and his cronies reared their ugly heads again. But her stomach twisted uncomfortably at the fact that Dick would probably realize the truth this afternoon. She was the cause of the energy disturbances, the eventual destruction of the universe. And Rachel wasn’t sure how she could ever recover from that.   
As she sat down at her desk, Rachel threw her bag onto her floor with a heavy thud. To her dismay, the bag tilted forward and its contents spilled out towards the seat next to her. She jumped up, grabbing the items before a familiar lock of green hair entered her vision.   
“Here - let me help.” Logan grabbed the book closest to his desk, and Rachel’s breath hitched as she realized it was the spellbook. Rachel’s heart jumped into her throat as she tried to comprehend the scene in front of her. “How...” she whispered, her eyes widening in horror as Logan glanced down at the book. The book had followed her, a cursed object threatening to never leave Rachel’s side. It felt almost like a direct response from her father. A taunt to say that his evil would never leave her.   
Logan’s fingers wrapped around it’s leatherbound spine, and it’s loose buckle fell open, causing loose papers to fly out of the book and to the ground. “Ah, shit, sorry.” he said, hastily trying to pick up what he’d dropped.   
She leaned over almost maniacally, grabbing the book back from him and almost tackling Logan to the floor in her frenzy. As she reached her hand out for the papers, she lost her balance and tumbled into Logan, her other hand landing on his chest for balance. Rachel let out a surprised high pitched noise when she realized how close she was to him.   
To his credit, Logan looked just as surprised, but not necessarily embarrassed or put off by her. In fact, Rachel could have sworn she saw a faint, mischievous smirk playing on his lips as he raised his eyebrows at her.   
“Geez. Sorry. Did I accidentally pick up your diary?”   
Rachel scowled, backing away from the boy - carefully, so as not to land back on him - and stuffing the loose papers into the book. “Something like that. Why were you with Kori this morning?”   
Logan sighed, scratching his neck and avoiding Rachel’s eyes as he continued to help pick up her supplies. “I didn’t mean to hurt your friendship or anything, Rachel. Honestly. She just asked for my help to make sure you were safe.”   
Rachel’s eyes narrowed. “How would you help make sure I was safe? What, did she want you to stalk me? Ask that guy Vic to hack my phone?”   
“No, geez, Rachel!” Logan said, raising his hands in defeat. “I just... I just came with her to your house. To check on you. I wouldn’t hack your phone .”   
Rachel felt the pit in her stomach grow as she looked back at Logan. It seemed like all she did recently was alienate the people who actually cared about her. She sighed. “I’m sorry, Logan. I guess I’m just... still shaken up by what happened this morning. And Arianna, ugh, she makes everything so much worse.”   
“You’re telling me,” Logan grimaced. “What did she do this time?”   
“She thinks Dick and I... ugh.” Rachel shuddered. “I can’t even say it. And she called me her usual insults.” Rachel’s eyes grew wide as she recalled Arianna’s words. Poor little raven. Had she imagined it? Suddenly, Arianna’s insults seemed a lot more sinister than schoolyard taunts. Had Trigon found a way to speak through her? Or was he invading all of Rachel’s thoughts instead, slowly converting her into the dark manifestation of evil that he wanted her to become?   
At her apparent distress, Logan put a hand on her shoulder, his gaze sympathetic.   
“Hey. You know whatever she says isn’t actually true. She’s just trying to get under your skin. You’re much better than anything Arianna says about you. I think you’re the coolest girl in the school.”   
Rachel felt her cheeks flush at the compliment, and held back a betraying smile. “Uh, thanks.”   
Logan’s ears were tinged with pink and he coughed, quickly looking away from her.   
“And, for what it’s worse, you could do worse than Dick.”   
“Oh my god ,” Rachel groaned, burying her head in her hands, even though she knew she should have expected this. Logan loved to rile her up.   
“I’m just saying!” he continued, his roguish smile back, “The man has the body of a   
Greek god. I wouldn’t be shy if I got a chance.”   
“You’re disgusting.”   
“Don’t hate on the truth, Rache.”   
Rachel laughed, shaking her head. Logan’s antics might have been grating, but talking to him felt like having a weight lift off Rachel’s shoulders. Sometimes she felt like Logan was the only person in her life who understood her even when she didn’t understand herself well. And after the hell weekend she’d had, any shred of normalcy felt refreshing.   
But her peace quickly diminished as she looked back down at her bag, the deep brown engraved cover of the spellbook peeking out of it. How had it followed her - was she bound to the book? Was it some kind of demonic possession, a cursed item that would never leave her side?   
Rachel tore her gaze away from the book, trying to calm her racing thoughts, trying to force herself to put the whole thing out of her mind. Her life was probably easier when all she had to worry about was whether her mother would throw a lamp at her before passing out in a haze of drug-induced psychosis, Rachel thought bitterly. Somehow, her life only seemed to be taking a downward trend from that.   
She turned her focus to Mr. Barclett’s droning lecture, hoping school would at least take her mind off the disaster the rest of her life was turning out to be.   
“It’s time,” Mr. Barclett began with his booming voice and theatrical hand motions, “That we continue our discussion about the monster of this story. I do hope all of you have something valuable to bring to this class.” He smiled, almost knowingly, looking at Rachel.   
Rachel sunk into her seat as Arianna’s hand - predictably - shot up.   
“Like I said earlier.” Arianna began, tossing her hair over her shoulder and leaning forward in her desk. “Grendel is obviously never going to amount to anything more than what his destiny tells him to be. It’s just part of his biology.”   
“Interesting view, Arianna,” Mr. Barclett said. “Care to elaborate?”   
“Gladly,” Arianna replied, her voice cloying as she shot a glance back at Rachel.   
“Everyone has destinies to fulfill. Some of them are more overt - they have family legacies, bloodlines to follow through on. Some of them are...less so. But no matter how late you realize what your destiny is, it doesn’t change the course of your life. And the harder you fight against it, you’ll just end up fulfilling it.” She laughed. It was shrill and sardonic, and somehow Rachel knew it was aimed directly at her. “It’s like if a dark, calculating raven tried to be a sweet little robin. It just wouldn’t work out, would it?”   
Rachel stood up, barely able to contain the bile that rose in her throat. Her head spun and her fingers gripped the edge of her desk. She could see Arianna staring at her out of the corner of her eye, the smirk still evident on her face. She wanted to slap the smile off her face, grab her and throttle her until she didn’t speak anymore. Energy coursed through her body, down her arms and into her finger tips, and Rachel’s eyes widened as she looked down to see the familiar dark shadows from before licking at her fingers. She quickly shoved her hands into her hoodie pockets.   
“Rachel, are you okay?” Logan asked, his voice hushed.   
“I, um, need to be excused,” Rachel mumbled, grabbing her bag. Before Mr. Barclett or Arianna could say anything, before she could see the shocked faces of any of her classmates, Rachel ducked her head into the hood of her jacket and ran out of the classroom.


	8. Chapter 8

The bathroom stall felt all at once claustrophobically tiny and somehow more expansive and too large for Rachel to feel safe at all. Her chest felt like a stone giant was sitting on it, each breath labored and shallow, an exercise in its own right. Rachel’s head still felt lightheaded, and she rested it against the toilet seat, forgoing any care about the cleanliness of it all.   
If she could, she would fall asleep here, maybe finally catch up on some sleep that didn’t get continuously interrupted by nightmare after nightmare, horrific premonitions and lectures from her demonic father.   
But Rachel couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t take a moment’s rest to escape from the hell that was her reality because she knew, deep inside, there was no escape. Her sleepless nights were forever plagued with thoughts of the world coming to an end because of her own reckless iodicy. And the nights with sleep were far, far, worse.   
Resigning herself to her fate, Rachel tore open the top of her school bag and brought out the magical teleporting spellbook. The runes on the front still made just as little sense to her as before, but there was more of a sense of foreboding that came with it now. She knew the power they held. Rachel’s fingers trembled as she opened the book carefully.   
Beware the power these pages hold. So tread lightly through every fold.   
Know the tales that have been foretold. The dice have already been rolled.   
“Could’ve read that before summoning evil demon dad,” Rachel grumbled to herself.   
“Nice going, Rachel.”   
“Nice going, indeed.”   
Rachel jumped at the familiar acerbic voice of none other than Arianna. She leaned down to see the bright red pumps underneath the bathroom door and her heart jumped into her throat. What was she doing here, and more importantly, what in hell did she want with Rachel?   
“It would be nice if you came out of that bathroom stall and actually faced me, you spineless child. Or I’ll be forced to blast the door open myself and, well, I feel like I’ve done enough property damage for a week with that poor baker’s place.”   
Rachel gasped, unable to keep the disbelief out of her voice. She stood up shakily, letting the spell book fall to the floor as she backed up, into the toilet. “You’re the attacker from the store that night.”   
“Thought you’d recognize the red lips, but I guess you were too busy being rescued by-” Arianna caught herself, laughing again. “What does he go by now, Nightwing? Pathetic. And here I was told you were to be the messiah that brought us all back.”   
“Brought who all back?” Rachel said, dodging another fiery attack from the demon. She was getting tired of all the secrets, tired of how many more layers of her past she needed to unpack before she got to the truth. It was exhausting to think that she was the daughter of Trigon, and even more exhausting to wonder what that title even meant.   
“I thought you were the princess of the night. The manifestation of an antichrist. The one all these religious jokers have been waiting for since the dawn of time, the one to bring the dark ones back to our former glory.” With each new title, Arianna’s voice grew deeper and deeper, eventually developing the strange undertone of a growl. “But you’re none of those things. And my allegiance to this new order is being tested daily.”   
“Princess of the Night.” Rachel scoffed, rolling the title out on her tongue. “Has a nice ring to it. Do I also get a personal chauffeur and Julie Andrews as my grandmother?”   
Arianna laughed at her remark sarcastically. “You never cease to amaze me with your ironic quips. I’m sure they’ll help you when hellfire rains down from the sky and the pits of hell open up.”   
Without warning, a blast shook the bathroom, and Rachel hit the floor as a hole burned through the stall door, barely missing her. She looked up to see Arianna smiling down at her - but there was something scarily off about her. Her face didn’t have her normal sunny california golden tan, but was glowing an almost radioactive green. Rachel instinctively shrunk back. Before she could respond with another ironic quip, the bathroom door opened, and she turned to see the familiar - if slightly terrified - face of Dick Grayson. He held a strange looking orange-yellow device in his hand, something that was giving off an incessant high pitched beeping. His undersized varsity letter jacket and jeans made him look like a character out of Archie comics, hilariously unfit for the situation at hand.   
Arianna - or whatever she was now - laughed at his incredulous expression. “Nice of you to join us Mr. Boy Wonder.”   
Dick tore his eyes away from the green-eyed demon and back to Rachel, then shifted back to Arianna. His mouth hung open. But his awe was short-lived, as Arianna got ready to fire another blast at him. The energy between her fingers wasn’t constant, Rachel noticed, as the demon flexed every few minutes to reset - maybe recharge. If she could get her distracted...   
Without thinking, Rachel lunged at Arianna, grabbing whatever part of her she could reach and tackling her. The demon shrieked, a sound that was ear-splitting and so high pitched that Rachel saw the mirrors form cracks out of the corner of her eye. She grabbed her ears in pain, a weak point that caused Arianna to kick her back into the stalls.   
Rachel’s spine hit the ceramic of the toilet, and she felt the impact shatter her pelvis as she screamed in agony.   
“Rachel!” Dick tried to run over to her, but Arianna flung him aside as if he was a ragdoll and not someone who spent three hours at the gym every other day. Arianna’s strength was clearly growing as her form became less and less distinguishable as human. Her eyes weren’t even mammalian anymore, instead replaced with the cold, calculating gaze of a lizard, her green slits staring at Rachel’s limp figure with hunger.   
Dick made a slow crawl towards them. “Don’t... don’t fucking touch her, you monster,” he gasped out.   
Arianna raised her hand, and Dick’s body slowly began to rise into the air, his hands clasped against his tightening throat as Arianna’s hand slowly balled into a fist. In her tiny cheerleading outfit, she looked like Regina George playing Darth Vader. She laughed. “I think I hear a little birdie in my ear... wouldn’t want old Batty to lose his precious little Robin, now would we?”   
Though slowly through her pain-induced haze, Rachel’s eyes widened as she registered Arianna’s new release of information. The demon released Dick, who collapsed back onto the floor, gasping for air.   
“And for my other little birdie,” Arianna glared down at her, crackles of electricity threatening to escape from her fingertips in another blast. She smiled ruefully. “I was meant to be your second in command. The advisor to the dark princess of the new Empire of Trigon! We were meant to rule when the fires of hell took over this planet and when you called your father back to take his rightful place as king of all infinite realities.” Her voice boomed. “You were to deliver us into a new age, Raven! An age of Trigon’s otherworldly rule, where demons and the infinitely damned could finally reign free.” Arianna’s leg shot out, kicking Rachel back down, into a fetal position. She leaned down to face her, all traces of a smile gone from her face. “But I’ve come to realize from your gross incompetence and inability to accept your fate that your time is over, dear Raven, and mine has come. I’ll send my regards to your father.”   
Arianna gave her a sickeningly smug smile as the ball of green flames grew in between her hands. Rachel knew that the moment it hit her, she and Dick would be gone. Thinking only on instinct, Rachel concentrated on the pit in her stomach - the source of her darkness, the thing that had caused her all this pain but had also saved her in the increasingly bizarre situations she happened to find herself in over the last few days.   
Arianna continued to laugh, her cackling echoing, bouncing off of the off-white tile and filling Rachel’s mind with thoughts of despair and death, of failure and decay. But she pushed through, trying to drown out the laughs to focus on her core, her inner strength. There was power there, she could feel it. A power ancient and deadly, a power older than time itself, older than she could possibly understand. She was Raven, Princess of the Night. Raven, Ruler of the Damned. Raven, who would not be defeated by the lowly spawn of a demon, the horrific half-blood entity that sought to destroy her.   
She could feel the darkness in her stomach expand, the current traveling down her spine, through her arms and legs, up into her eyes, clouding her vision with smoke and vapors. She could feel herself lifting up off the ground, her normal speaking voice paired with something far more guttural. She couldn’t see anything anymore, but she vaguely noticed the absence of Arianna’s cackling, Dick yelling her name, and far back, in the corner of her mind, Rachel heard the eternal chorus of the damned, a whalesong that seemed to be on loop, a tape that made anyone who listened to it go mad.   
When she opened her mouth, it was what came out.   
And with that, the bathroom exploded.


	9. Chapter 9

In hindsight, Rachel felt that she probably should have known that the meanest girl in her high school who seemingly targeted her endlessly for no obvious reason was a demon. She’d definitely spent some mornings wondered whether Arianna was from the depths of hell, sent directly to torture her and make her life miserable, but having that come true was still a bit of a shock. Oh, and there was also the bathroom explosion.   
Rachel crawled out of the rubble that was once a bathroom stall and coughed deeply, wincing at the sharp pain in her lung as she did. She wasn’t sure how many more parts of her body she’d injured indefinitely due to this, but she wasn’t planning on starting to count now.   
Arianna’s crumpled figure was in front of her, any semblance of her demonic figure no longer in sight. She was, once more, a human girl - the mean girl cheerleader of a local high school and nowhere close to a Soldier of Hell. Arianna was a real person, or, at least she was at one point. Rachel wasn’t entirely sure how she could tell about the whole soul thing yet - where her powers over the dead and her reign over the underworld began and ended. But it was an instinct she felt. She put her hand on the young girl’s shoulder, but it was ice cold. Not a trace of a soul in the body - probably hadn’t been for a long time. Whatever that demon had done to the body - whatever crossroads she had met a vulnerable teenage girl on to make the deal of infinity on, it had devoured Arianna’s very essence - her existence in this world. No one would remember her from this moment. Rachel shuddered at the realization.   
“Rachel!” Rachel heard Dick’s voice somewhere behind her, in between broken beams and toilet pipes that were blowing like geysers. She groaned, pulling herself out of the debris, biting down hard on her lip at the pain in her pelvis and lungs and... everywhere. Somehow getting beat up every day for the past few days hadn’t made Rachel more impervious to debilitating pain. Unfortunately.   
“I’m over here!” she called out.   
There was the sound of crashing debris and uneven footsteps and then she saw Dick’s face appear in front of her. His eyebrows were creased and his mouth was set into a hard line. The jacket was a complete wreck, the bottom half of it charred to the point where it was indiscernible from ash and the top half soaked and torn to shreds. Poor Kori, Rachel thought. She’d loved that jacket - she had been over the moon when Dick lent it to her after she told him she needed to walk home in the cold. Rachel remembered her best friend’s excitement as she gave it back to Dick with a handwritten note and small gift in the pocket for him to find.   
It struck her as slightly odd that this was all she could focus on at the moment - the jacket and Kori and the absolute disgusting colors of the bathroom tiles and the hilariousness of the situation that her first real battle with one of her father’s high-ranking cronies had ended in her taking a lovely shower in public school toilet water. Rachel began laughing.   
Dick kneeled down, his face tinged with even more concern. “Oh god, did you hit your head? Are you still sane? Do you know who I am?” Questions which only served to aid in   
Rachel’s hysterics. She realized that she was past the point of a breaking point - she hadn’t had much time between getting sold into sex slavery, finding out about demon king dad, and nearly dying every twenty minutes.   
“Come on, Dick. I-” Rachel shook her head in disbelief, “how is this not hilarious?”   
Dick huffed, grabbing her arms and pulling her out from under the rubble. Rachel grimaced in pain as he helped her stand up, not making eye contact with her. It was clear he was upset about the whole situation, and maybe Rachel should have been too. But when she collapsed against the only remaining wall that was left standing, finally allowed the ringing in her ear to subside enough to hear the cacophonous noise of the fire alarm ringing, and looked back on the symphony of toilet geysers, it was all she could do stop herself from laughing again.   
“Raven,” Dick finally said, his voice raspy and low, likely still recovering from whatever Sith lord chokehold the demon had done on him.   
Rachel snuck a glance at the boy from out of the corner of her eye. He looked tired, and a bit defeated, but mostly angry. “I’m sorry,” she said, sincerely. “I didn’t mean to lie, I just didn’t know who I could trust. I didn’t know what you wanted. I didn’t even know what was going on myself. Not really, anyway.”   
Dick shook his head, burying it into his hands with a deep groan. “What in the hell - I just thought these were some strange signals. Some mad scientist with a weird lab. A supervillain with a plan to take over the tri state area. Not... whatever this occult shit is.”   
There was that question answered. The signals were what had led Dick to the bathroom, and the strange radio device was probably what the computer whiz Vic had built for him.   
“Were you ever going to tell me, or were we just supposed to wait until Trident or whoever the fuck-   
“Trigon”   
“-decided to... what was it?”   
“Take over every possible reality and subject all humans to his demon king rule with me as his slave in command,” Rachel finished softly.   
Dick swallowed, blinking rapidly as he took this information in. “Right. That.”   
“Well-” Rachel began as her memories of the fight began rapidly recovering, “Robin. Correct me if I’m wrong but I apparently wasn’t the only one who was not exactly forthright about who they were.”   
Dick - Nightwing - Robin - whoever he was really, turned to her, his eyes narrowed. “No one needed to know that,” he said with such spite that Rachel was slightly taken aback.   
“What do you mean? You’ve been Batman’s bitch this whole time and you think I don’t deserve to know? Now the fancy ass car definitely makes sense. Does Bat Daddy also pay for the penthouse?”   
“Fuck you,” Dick said. “You literally have no idea what it was like.”   
“Well, same to you!” Rachel yelled. “Newsflash, finding out that your absentee father is really only absent because he’s too busy trying to take over every possible universe isn’t very fun either!”   
Before Dick could respond in kind, there was a shout in the distance, and Rachel stopped to listen as more voices joined - teachers and kids, likely pouring out from the school building during the fire drill and realizing that it was nothing close to a drill at all.   
“Shit,” she said as the voices grew closer.   
Dick stood up quickly, then groaned, leaning on the wall and clutching his side. “We need to leave now .”   
Rachel looked around quickly for any sign of her bag, for the book, but there was nothing but endless rubble and ruins in sight.   
“Rachel!” Dick said, his voice sounding slightly strangled.   
“I know, I know.” Rachel chewed on the inside of her cheek. The book had followed her before, right? She sighed, realizing that she’d never be able to find it. She’d just have to trust that whatever strange magical stalking spell the book had, it would find its way back to her. She stood up slowly, the pain thankfully not as bad as it was a few minutes ago. Strangely, it almost felt like she hadn’t even been beat up the way she was. Rachel took a deep breath in and realized her lungs had already fully healed. She thought back to what Dick had said earlier that weekend in the penthouse about her healing abilities.   
Dick’s hand gripped the side of the wall so tight that his knuckles were turning white. He grit his teeth as he took every step. Rachel looked at him, alarmed.   
“You’re turning blue!”   
Dick shook his head. “I’m fine,” he said between heaving breaths. Rachel threw his arm over her shoulder and winced as it hit a tender bruise, regretting her overconfidence in her ability to heal. They made their way out of the crumbling building, out the back and away from the direction of the cacophonous voices.   
Thankfully Dick’s discount Batmobile was parked at the back entrance to the school, exactly where they needed it, though he gave Rachel an irritated glare when she referred to it by that name.   
Instinctively, Dick reached for the driver’s seat.   
“Oh, fuck no. The last thing we need is for you to get into a car crash because you pass out in the middle of driving.”   
“Well what other plan do you suggest?” he asked. “Hitchhike back to the apartment?”   
Rachel rolled her eyes. “Let me drive.”   
Dick balked, clutching the keys to his chest. He opened his mouth to protest and then closed it. “Look, you can’t drive the car. You won’t know how to operate it. It’s a special vehicle.”   
“Special vehicle my ass, everyone’s seen the Batmobile in the papers and the news.”   
“This is not the fucking Batmobile!”   
There were echoing screams and yells coming from the school, and they both turned to see a swarm of people running through the backlot, not too far from where they were. It was clear that they’d discovered the wreckage by now, and most likely... Arianna’s body.   
Rachel let out a stream of curses - some she were certain were in Latin, ones she hadn’t known before her spell in the bathroom. “Dick, if you don’t let me drive your damn car, the only vehicle we’ll be in is the back of a police cruiser.”   
Dick pursed his lips and sighed, pressing the keys into her hand. “Fine. But you listen to me and do what I say. The last thing we need is to turn this car into a submarine on Main Street.”   
Rachel grinned as she got in behind the wheel, the devilish possibility of getting to play out GTA V in real life forming in her mind already. The engine roared to life. “What now?” she asked, turning to Dick.   
Dick looked in front of them, where teachers and advisors were running towards them, yelling at them to stop. “Now you fucking step on it.”


	10. Chapter 10

It turned out that the idea of Grand Theft Auto was a lot less fun and a lot more anxiety inducing when you couldn't mow over everyone in sight without actually killing people. Rachel let out a high pitched scream despite herself as she swerved into a lane, knocking into the car behind her and nearly spinning out. 

Dick lurched forward in his seat, his face slightly green. "I'm going to be sick," he mumbled, grabbing onto the bottom of the seat. 

Rachel pulled a face. "Open a window or something, geez." 

"I'm sure the cars behind us would love that surprise on their windshield." 

They raced down the highway as fast as humanly possible without alerting any patrollers to their getaway. There were a couple of sirens that were ringing far behind them, but it was hard to tell if they were the target vehicle. The last thing they needed was a news helicopter following their every move - Rachel had learned at least that much from her seven hour long gaming sessions with Logan. 

She felt a slight twinge in her heart as she thought about the other boy. Rachel felt terrible for ditching him so often, for keeping so many secrets, for not trusting him when he gave her every reason to do so. Kori, too, with her constant offerings of help and pleas to Rachel to let her in. The guilt had been weighing on her all weekend, only intensified over the morning thanks to the fight they'd had. And now she was in a high speed getaway car chase with Kori's boyfriend after they'd both narrowly escaped death by a supernatural being. And the last conversation her best friend had with her was a fight. 

Rachel shook these thoughts from her head, focusing singularly on the road as she swerved into an exit lane with extremely close precision, a turn that, if it had been seconds later, would have ended in a collision with the median. If there had been any cruisers, they'd hopefully lost them by this point. 

As they pulled into an abandoned lot, she stopped the car, and Dick nearly threw himself out of the vehicle to throw up. Rachel winced. The feeling of vomiting was bad enough without accompanying it with potential broken ribs and a bruised lung. Her own injuries were seemingly unnoticeable at this point, or perhaps she had unlocked some magical ability to not feel the pain of the injuries anymore. But it was likely the healing power, as her pelvis and tailbone didn't feel like they hurt when she sat down and shifted in the seat. 

Rachel opened and closed her hands, testing each of her unbroken fingers in partial amazement. It had been less than thirty minutes ago, she was fairly certain at least, that Arianna had shoved her into a toilet and sprained her entire lower back. As Rachel ran her fingers down her spine, she marveled at not just how quickly, but how smoothly it had healed. 

Dick dragged himself back into the car, his body ragged. It made Rachel almost not want to tell the guy what they needed to do next, but the sirens were growing closer to them by the minute. She was sure their school had called every authority and news van in a thirty mile radius of Jump City. 

"We have to abandon the car." 

Dick groaned, burying his head back in his hands. "Please don't do this." 

Rachel sighed. "Look, we're in an abandoned car lot. This is the best place. We'll just leave the Robinmobile-" 

"The - what did you call it?" 

"-in this garage and hope the police don't find it. Meanwhile I can just jumpstart one of these old pieces of junk for us to get back to your place under the cover of a trashy vintage car." 

Dick ran his hand over the dash of the car, pouting slightly, his tone one of utter seriousness. "I'm so sorry, babe. I know this is horrible. I can't believe I'm saying okay to this. 

You've been so strong for us." 

Rachel groaned. "Are you talking to your car?" 

"Shut up. Let me grieve in my own way." 

Fifteen minutes later, with the Robinmobile (as Rachel had taken to calling it, much to Dick's chagrin) safely tucked away in some random abandoned mechanic's shop and Rachel hotwiring an old beat up Chevy impala from the 90s, they were back on the road on their way back to the apartment. The sirens had thankfully diminished, and Dick kept an eye out for the occasional helicopter that seemed to fly a bit too low. 

"Where the hell did you learn to hot-wire cars so well?" Dick asked, eventually breaking their silence, "Do they teach you that too in GTA V after you unlock enough levels?" 

Rachel laughed. "In a way it was a grand theft auto that I learned it from." 

"I have a feeling we're not talking about the video game anymore." 

"Good instincts." Rachel sighed. The memory that the conversation had brought up was dredged so deep into the recesses of her mind that she almost wondered if it had been a dream. But clearly, seeing her success at stealing a car now, that was not the case, though she wished it was. "My mom and I helped steal about a street's worth of cars when I was in seventh grade." 

Dick let out a low whistle. "What? A whole street's worth? How many even is that? Five - six?" 

"Nine." Rachel had remembered the news broadcast the morning after. People were crying and screaming, families with young children shaken up by the events of the night, the whole neighborhood suddenly feeling so unsafe, people turning on each other. It had made her mom laugh in between swigs of her booze, basically in glee that she had brought so much suffering onto other people's lives. Maybe because now it was a better reflection of her own, but maybe because she was just rotten to the core. 

Rachel instead had spent the afternoon wallowing in the depths of her shame as she saw the weeping single mother of four children wondering how she was going to get into work the next morning. It confirmed deep inside her what she already knew about herself. She was a monster, descended from a monster. And now, that belief was only doubled by the unpleasant discovery of her secondary parentage from a demon overlord. 

Dick was silent for a while, and Rachel wondered what judgement he was passing on her. Not that it mattered. Any name he tried to throw at her would probably bbe one she'd said to herself in the bathroom mirror every morning. Criminal, sociopath, evil, monster, bitch. 

When Dick did finally speak, what he said surprised Rachel. "So many people will think you're evil because of where you come from. Because of what you did when you had little control over what you could've done. Changing since then counts for nothing." 

Rachel considered this. "Personal experience?" 

"Being Robin was less about being Batman's sidekick and more about being the fall guy. 

No one liked Robin." 

"That's not true. Kori liked Robin." This was true, something that made this most recent discovery even more hilarious in Rachel's mind. Kori followed the superhero sagas of Gotham City like it was her own life on the line, carefully picking apart grainy footage of fights and even once asking the computer club to hack into the Gotham PD for a special clip they had of Robin defeating one of the biggest villains to grace the city's streets - well, before Joker anyway. A psychopathic explosion-happy clown was the last straw for a lot of the city's superheros and ordinary civilians. She relayed the story of Kori's borderline obsession to Dick, who smiled at this revelation, though Rachel could tell that he tried to hide it by looking away from her. 

"But you can't tell her I ever let you know, obviously. Breaking best friend code and all that. Although I think meeting her celebrity crush and nearly killing him twice probably already trumps that." Rachel mused out loud, a smile forming on her lips as well as she discussed something so seemingly silly for once. 

"And leaving his car to die in an abandoned warehouse and having him endure the worst high speed chase since Batman went partially blind and still piloted the Batmobile." "All those things too." Rachel agreed. 

As they finally pulled into the apartment's garage, Rachel parked the car to the side, cutting off the connected wires to turn off the car. She turned to look at Dick, partially to rub it in his face about how well the seeming junkbucket did after she re-ignited it and partially to check up on him. But her blood ran cold when she took him in, slumped over and quickly turning blue in the face. 

Dick was dying. 

*** 

There wasn't an awful lot that Rachel knew about medicine, but she knew enough from her extensive re-watches of Grey's Anatomy that blue lips were never a good sign. Especially if they happened suddenly. 

"Shit, shit." Rachel muttered, quickly grabbing hold of the boy and dragging him, with every last ounce of strength she had, out of the car and onto the cold floor of the garage. It only served to make the situation look even more dire, seeing Dick Grayson sprawled out on the concrete, his entire body quickly turning a clammy pale color. His heart, it must be his heart. A small voice of reason in her head said. She should call a doctor, get Dick to an ER, but they would likely end up in jail for that - making them as good as dead anyway. 

No, she had to be resourceful. 

She tried to muster every ounce of first aid and medical knowledge she had, but Rachel realized soon that she was sorely lacking. There was only one other option - one that she'd thought of as an afterthought when she'd first seen it, but suddenly seemed extremely important. 

"Come on, come on. Spellbook, where are you? Please come back to me. Please stalk me to Dick Grayson's apartment." Rachel felt ridiculous, especially so when her friend seemed to be more and more in the clutches of death with every plea she spoke. 

Maybe she needed a bag - something to hold the book in for it to come to her. Rachel grabbed Dick's MMA duffel bag from the Impala - something he'd insisted on transferring into the new car, for whatever reason. She tore open the zipper with baited breath, ripping through its contents until there was nothing left in there. No clothes, no shoes, no cure - no book coming to the rescue. 

Rachel looked back at her patient, gasping as she realized just how far Dick was gone. His skin had gone from just being slightly cold and clammy to the touch to almost fully grey, any sense of circulation in his body slowly dissipating, entropy taking over for life and decay starting its process. Rachel could feel the call to it in her soul, the call to help decay grow and fester, to help death with it's process. She was Decay, in extant form, and all she could do is force others down the same path. 

No, her mind screamed, Fight it. Fight the urge. Heal him instead. You can heal him. 

"I can't!" Rachel yelled out loud, though the target was her own mind. "I can't heal people. Not without the spells." 

Some magic we cannot be taught. Some magic is better learned by doing. Some magic gives us no choice. 

This was the third option. Or lack of an option, for better terms. Her mind - or whatever spiritual voice was guiding her that hopefully wasn't some disguised voice of Trigon - was right/ It was all she could do. 

Hesitantly, Rachel grasped Dick's arms with her own, much smaller hands. The familiar pit in her stomach was back, but this time, she knew that it was herself, and not Trigon, who was really in command of it, as long as she focused on her goal for reaching into that power. Rachel reached into that as deeply as she could, focusing on all of the reasons she wanted Dick alive, focusing on why he shouldn't die, why this would take him from the Earth too soon. She closed her eyes, trying to harness any energy she could find inside her. It was an exhausting search, having to body scan, trying to find sources of energy when she'd depleted so much over every day and every fight. But to hell if she lost Dick Grayson. 

It was a slow, agonizing few minutes, but with due time, and with every focused thought and directed current, Dick began to breathe again. It was shallow and short, barely there unless she stopped to hear it, but it wasn't death. And that's all she needed to keep going. 

There was more to healing than just wishing it, though, as Rachel soon discovered when she directed her energy to the organ in question. She couldn't exactly see Dick's heart in her mind, the way a doctor would be able to during a surgery, but Rachel could feel it's aura, it's presence. It was infected, being colonized and pillaged by a foreign invader. A poison. Whatever that demon had done to Dick, it was more than a simple beating. She'd chemically immobilized him, administered a slow-acting poison that hit when the victim least expected it. Rachel groaned with intense effort as she directed all of her energy at the heart, pulling out the poison. It was hard work, less like healing and more like undoing time, changing the clockwork on Dick's biology to make it as if the demon had never attacked him. 

A few minutes later, the once nearly dead man had made an almost full recovery, sitting up slowly and staring at Rachel, with a somewhat incredulous look on his face. Dick clasped at his chest, his hand circling around his heart in a slight daze. The deathly grey color, the clamminess was gone, replaced once more with a youthful blush and circulation that actually worked. 

"I nearly died." Dick said, his voice sounding distant. 

"A little more than nearly," Rachel replied, relief washing over her at hearing his voice not being part of the horrific chorus of the dead that she'd heard earlier. 

"But you saved me - how did you-?" 

Rachel shook her head, still in shock from the day's events. Her head felt woozy, the scene in front of her growing blurry. "All I know," Rachel whispered, "is that I think I need a nap." 

*** 

In Rachel's dream, she was standing in the middle of another tornado. Nothing she wasn't used to at this point. She wondered if it even mattered anymore that there it was even there as an obvious scare tactic from her father. Rachel was just glad it no longer worked on her anymore. 

"Trigon? I know you're behind all this bullshit. It would be nice if you could lower the volume on these winds a bit!" Rachel called out into the distance. 

There was no response, no annoying quip from the demon king, no arrogant remark about how he knew she would bow down to him eventually. In fact, he didn't say a word - and there was no presence of him all around Rachel. 

The tornado didn't slow down, it's winds only amplifying and their howling sounds only growing larger and larger. But as the noise grew louder, Rachel's stomach churned. It wasn't tornado winds she was hearing. It was the moaning of the damned. 

Suddenly the tornadoes, the white space, the visits with Trigon, it all made sense. This was hell. This was her father's dominion. The walls of the tornado seemed to close in, almost emboldened by Rachel's enlightenment. 

She tentatively reached out, her fingers brushing the edge of the storm's walls. Rachel screamed as it burned her fingers, the winds breaking to show the horrific souls of humanity's worst, gnawing at her hand, devouring her soul, hungry to take her. She tried to pull herself out of the walls, but the grasp of the dead only wrapped around her arm further, tugging her deeper in. Rachel could feel a lurch in her body, the feeling of her soul being pulled out of her still mortal body. As her body entered the walls of the tornado bit by bit, the dead's howls became more and more decipherable to her, and Rachel finally understood their message, their call. 

She was to join them. She was to become damned.


	11. Chapter 11

Waking up after realizing your immortal soul was probably going to be stuck in the bad   
place for all of eternity was about as pleasant as having a massive hangover. Rachel groaned and   
winced as light pierced her half-open eyes, seeming to taunt her. Every inch of her body was in   
pain - supposedly her healing powers hadn’t taken any effect on herself - and her shoulders   
screamed as she rolled them back, sitting up hesitantly. She was back in Dick’s apartment. The   
last memory she had was healing him in the car - it seemed to be a sort of pattern for them, at   
this point, to get targeted by demons from whatever hellscape her father ruled, for Dick to need   
healing, and for Rachel to pass out after expending all her energy. As far as superhero training   
plans went, it was probably a pretty shitty one.   
Rachel hoisted herself off of the bed, taking a deep breath against the pain. Although her   
body ached for more rest, she knew she didn’t have that luxury. Whatever had attacked them in   
the school bathroom, and before at the cafe… well, it wasn’t a one-off instance. Rachel had a   
sinking feeling in her stomach that this was something she would have to get accustomed to,   
which meant that there wasn’t much time before they had to prepare themselves.   
“Dick?” she called out as she walked out to the hallway, her voice hoarse and still   
recovering from whatever otherworldly magic had overtaken her when she screamed in the   
bathroom.   
There was no response as Rachel walked into the kitchen, only to find Dick sitting   
cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by open books, intently staring at one of them as if he was   
in a meditative trance. There was a half-empty coffee pot next to him and a litany of empty   
mugs.   
She looked at the scene for a moment, trying to take in the puzzling nature of it. “Uh,   
Dick? You okay?”   
He seemed to jolt out of his state at the mention of his name, looking at her with his eyes   
still slightly wild. “Huh? Oh, shit, Rachel, you’re awake,” he mumbled. He looked ragged,   
exhausted to the bone. Even though Rachel had been able to heal most of his physical ailments,   
she knew that the events of the past few days - fuck, had it really only been days? - were likely   
catching up to him, no matter how hard he tried to outrun them. Rachel assumed that she’d had   
the same look for days on end. She wondered how Logan even found her cute when she was   
running on no sleep and probably looked like she had been hit by a truck. Well, that was   
assuming he did find her cute. Not that her barely-existent love life mattered anyway when the   
fate of the whole world - multiverse, now that she thought about it - was cursed thanks to her.   
Dick rubbed his hands on his temples and leaned back against the bottom of the couch,   
closing his eyes. “God I haven’t pulled an all-nighter this intense since Batman had me up   
researching all those corrupt politicians in Gotham.”   
Rachel knelt down next to him and picked up one of the books on the ground. “Mystics   
and Mythology: The History of the Occult in America,” she read. “Why all the research?”   
Dick picked up the book in front of him. “It’s what you used in the bathroom, isn’t it?   
I’ve been reading through it all night and I haven’t been able to decipher it.”  
Rachel grabbed the book away from him. “You could have asked!” she said, irritated.   
“The last time I opened this fucking thing I apparently blew up the school! And the time before   
that I literally unleashed a horrific demon into this universe!”   
Dick looked at her in shock. “Wait - what?” he asked. “That was the thing that fucking   
summoned the father of all evil and you carried it in your backpack?”   
“I’m fucking homeless, you dickhead. Where else was I supposed to keep the only family   
heirloom I have?”   
“You could have told me that you apparently knew the reason those assholes chased us   
that night and that you had the answer to it all along!”   
Rachel groaned. “How was I supposed to know I could trust you?”   
“I saved your life!”   
“I saved yours too! And anway, you lied about being Robin, so apparently we were both   
hiding the truth.”   
Dick raised his hands in a symbol of surrender. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t have time to   
wait to see when you woke up, alright? Apparently your evil demon dad is sending his evil   
demon mercenaries after us so we don’t stop the world from ending, so forgive me for not asking   
for your permission,” he finished, his tone biting.   
Rachel glared at him, even though she hated that he had a point. There was no other way   
through this other than barreling into it head on. Although even opening the book now made her   
physically ill. She could feel the pounding feeling in her head come back as she looked at the   
cover, the ringing in her ears growing louder. She gripped the book tightly, closing her eyes to   
regain some control. The book was like a siren call, pulling her sweetly towards it’s presence,   
coaxing her gently to cultivate her powers. There was power in having it, a power that Rachel   
wanted to wield, but whether she would use it for good or evil was still up in the air.   
She shoved the book back towards Dick. “Ugh, I feel sick,” she said.   
He took it away from her quickly. “This is what activates your crazy world-ending   
bathroom-exploding powers, so it’s probably for the best that we keep it away from you. At least   
for now.”   
Rachel wanted to argue with him. There was a part of her that felt like it wanted to keep   
getting close to the book, to let it in and learn it’s secrets. But she knew that part of her was what   
Trigon wanted her to serve, so she nodded instead. “You’re probably right,” she agreed, although   
she felt a pang in her chest as she said it. They sat there in silence for a bit, taking in the   
situation. Then Rachel spoke.   
“So, you’re Robin,” she said. “That’s… cool.”   
Dick barked out a laugh, but there was no humor behind it. “Hardly. It was less of a   
choice and more like indentured servitude. I pray for whatever vulnerable orphan that asshole   
preys on next.”   
“You mean Batman? He - what, adopted you?” Rachel asked, trying to put the pieces   
together.  
A look of slight panic flashed across Dick’s face, although he regained composure   
quickly. “Uh, no, just worked together. It was just under some pretty horrible working   
conditions. Getting almost murdered, tortured on the daily, put through rigorous training and   
tests, being taken advantage of by so many asshole superheroes it got too hard to count… you   
know. The whole thing.”   
“Right.”   
“Anyway, I’m out of that shit now. Gotham is a city that’s doomed to repeat its cycles of   
death and rebirth until the end of time. I’m just glad I don’t have to care about it anymore.”   
Rachel grimaced. “Now we just have to care about the whole universe falling into the   
clutches of Trigon.”   
Dick grinned, despite the dark tone of the subject. “I’ll take this to dealing with the   
Joker’s bullshit any day.” Maybe the events of the last few days should have made Rachel ready   
to accept any insane fact that was thrown at her, but it still threw her that Dick Grayson, the guy   
she would have dismissed as some random high school jock who had no clue what the world was   
really like, had faced one of the most notorious criminals of Gotham City. How did he somehow   
put on the face of any other normal high school boy when his past was full of demons? How did   
he wake up in the morning and decide to keep going when there was no home in his past, no   
hope in his future? And if he could do it, did that mean there was some hope for Rachel?   
“Well, we don’t have much time,” Dick said, after a moment. “I’ve been up all night   
trying to research this weird occult shit but I’ve gotten literally nowhere with it. I can’t even find   
any mentions of Trigon or some demon overlord anywhere. And this book is no help.” Dick said,   
flipping through the pages of her heirloom book. “Other than some weird incantations that I tried   
to cross-reference, even though it was a dead end.”   
“You didn’t chant anything from the book, did you?” Rachel asked.   
“I’m not stupid,” Dick replied defensively. “Besides, I don’t think I have your abilities   
anyway. I saw you in the bathroom - it’s like you had some kind of otherworldly spirit inside   
you. How long have you been that way?”   
“I didn’t experience anything until a couple of days ago. Right before I summoned Trigon,” she said. “Before that, I swear I was just a normal girl.” Even as she said the words   
though, she doubted their candor. Her childhood being raised by a mother who even the devil   
couldn’t love was anything but normal… and even she had said it. Rachel was a monster with no   
hope for redemption. All the horrible deeds her mother had forced upon her were hers alone to   
carry, and she knew that her soul was the one tainted by their evil.   
“And where did you get this book?” Dick asked.   
Rachel hesitated. Opening up to Dick about this meant that the carefully concealed truth   
about her life at home would slowly come apart, whether she liked it or not. But she was in too   
deep anyway, and there was more at stake than the potential involvement of Child Protective   
Services. “My mother. It was in the basement of my house, locked away in some old boxes.   
Apparently my mom…” Rachel grimaced. “I don’t know. She did some demon summoning  
thing, and used Trigon to kill her abusive parents. And then… somehow she ended up pregnant   
with me in the process.”   
“Gross,” Dick said.   
“Thanks. Anyway, I opened the book and said some spell in there, and he showed up,   
threatening to take over the universe. And now… we’re here.”   
Dick thought for a moment. “Well, your mother is our best bet for more information,   
then, right? I mean, none of my books or research are any help here. Can we talk to her?”   
Rachel looked down, trying to hide the panic on her face as he spoke. Going back to her   
mother’s house? After everything that had happened, it seemed impossible. And Dick wanted to   
talk to her, too. She wanted to laugh at the thought of her mother sitting down and calmly   
explaining the demon contract and subsequent sex to Robin. She wanted to laugh, but all that   
rose in her chest was a tightly wound knot of fear. But Dick was right. There were no other   
options.   
She sighed, nodding. “Yes. I guess it’s time we talk to the woman who started this shit   
train.


	12. Chapter 12

Somehow, the house looked like it was in an even more decrepit condition than it was when Rachel had been kicked out. The front porch’s floorboards were sinking into the ground, and the yard looked like it had been hit by a tornado. The house looked like it was folding in on itself, each flimsy shingle splintering and the perpetually leaky roof now about to cave in. She knew that Trigon’s appearance had caused damage to the basement, but this was something different. It was as if the house itself was rotting from the inside, finally spewing out the toxicity that had been built up in its walls for decades into the street.   
Rachel snuck a glance at Dick, who looked like he was trying to appear neutral about the sight in front of him, but failing. “It’s okay,” she said, trying not to laugh. “I know it sucks.”   
Dick looked at her, awkwardness apparent. “No, I- it’s your home. I’m sure it’s lovely on the inside.”   
“Trust me. It’s anything but,” she deadpanned. Rachel gathered a breath, looking back at the dilapidated building, “Okay. She’s supposed to be at work right now, so we have some time to look around the basement and gather anything she might not want us to have. Then when she comes home we can confront her about all the shit we find.” She’d quickly given up on maintaining any facade that she had a normal mother-daughter relationship with the woman. Dick was going to find out the ugly truth of it all sooner or later - and besides, she doubted he had any reason to believe that the demon-fucker that kicked their child out was somehow a kind, loving mother.   
Dick nodded at the plan. “Anything specific we’re looking for?” he asked, as they walked into the house.   
“Anything - legal documents, books, diaries, weird artifacts with Latin spells on them.   
The whole occult thing.” Rachel turned on the light to the basement, her breath hitching as she saw it illuminate the room where she had last seen the demon. It looked like her mother hadn’t made an effort to clean anything up, which wasn’t surprising for her. There were still boxes strewn everywhere, their contents spilling out, and the remnants of the burn marks on the floor.   
Dick raised an eyebrow. “Damn, he did a number on this place.”   
“Just think about what he’s going to do to the whole world,” Rachel replied grimly.   
“That won’t happen,” Dick said immediately. “We’re going to find what we need to stop Trigon.” He tread down the stairs, leaning over to start looking through the boxes. Rachel wished she had the same resolve and confidence - or perhaps it was more of an act for her comfort.   
They began the slow process of sifting through piles of old things from Rachel’s past, most of which she had seen before. There were Rachel’s old toys, which her mother had told her were broken or donated, but apparently were thrown in boxes down here, old photos and albums of people from her and her mother’s past, cassette tapes and CDs with songs she had the faintest memory of. As she combed through the items, Rachel felt a painful lump rise in her throat, and she swallowed it down, her eyes watering. Had there been good times? Times when she didn’t feel so alone in the world, when her mother hadn’t been the same person who basically pimped her out for money? The photo albums showed pictures of her smiling as a child, an expression that felt almost unrecognizable to her now, especially after what she had just experienced. She quickly threw the album aside.   
“Nothing useful in there?” Dick asked, picking it up. Rachel quickly grabbed the album back.   
“Just baby pictures.”   
But past all the wreckage of Rachel’s old life, as they continued to dig deeper, Rachel began to realize just how much more to the story of her mother’s life there was. Dick held up one of the photo albums. “Uh, I think you might want to take a look at this,” he said, handing it to Rachel.   
The photos inside showed a young girl standing with her two parents in front of what looked like an old farmhouse. Her hair was long, in plaited braids, and her parents stood stoically, without a trace of a smile on their faces. She took out the picture, turning it over in her hands. “Sybil, Adam, and me, 1985. My grandparents,” she said, quietly. Her mother went by the name Helen, but there was no question that the young girl whose face held a quiet sort of rage in the photo was the same woman who had raised her without mercy.   
“Not just that,” Dick said, flipping through the pages. “Here,” he said, pointing to a photo.   
It was another picture of Sybil, outside in a field, looking back at the camera, whoever was photographing her. She had the same angry, all-too-familiar expression, but it was what was behind her that stopped Rachel cold. There was a shadow, inexplicably there, in the exact shape of Trigon. She turned the page, heart pounding, only to find that every other picture in the book had the same shadow, haunting whichever picture that her mother was in.   
“I don’t understand,” she said, “I - my mom told me she summoned him when she was older. Why is he following her? And how did no one else notice the shadows? How did no one say anything?” She ripped out one of the photos and turned it around, trying to find an explanation. Rachel read the description out loud, “Sybil...and the Supreme Lord? Holy shit.”   
“Your grandparents knew about Trigon,” Dick said. He pulled out another book from the pile of boxes. “Look at this.”   
The book looked similar to the spellbook, covered in the same strange runes. Rachel felt the same strange magnetic pull towards it, as she took it gingerly from Dick. “The Practitioner's   
Handbook: For use at meetings only. Oh my god, it’s some kind of cult book.”   
“A cult for worshipping Trigon.” Dick agreed. “And I guess your grandparents were pretty high up,” he said, pointing at some more items in the box. There were badges and medals inside, patches like you’d find at the girl scouts or in the military. But they all had inscriptions like Supreme Warlock or Knight of Darkness.   
“This shit runs in my family,” Rachel said with disgust. “Summoning Trigon wasn’t just my mom’s hobby. It was my grandparents… and maybe my family before then too. Oh, fuck.”   
Dick shook his head. “I just don’t understand - how did this cult get formed? What kind of people would want some demon overlord to take over all of Earth?”   
“The kind of people I’m related to, apparently,” Rachel said miserably. There wasn’t one ounce of good to be found in her family line. What cursed blood ran through her veins, and what kind of fate did it condemn her to? She hoped it wouldn’t be the same fate as her mother and grandparents.   
She flipped through the handbook, shuddering as she read the instructions for various rituals. It seemed like every cursed practice from every culture had somehow been strained into one book. There were blood sacrifices required for new recruits and waterboarding torture for those that betrayed the cult. And the end goal, apparently, was to summon Trigon and then bring about some kind of rapture that the cult would be spared from. And thanks to Rachel, they may have reached their goal.   
As she flipped through to the end of the book, one page caught her eye. Seven sins have been cast into the gauntlet, seven will bring us to a new world, seven who will enter the garden of Eden, and take what has always been our lord’s. Rachel looked at the photos below the cryptic message, depicting seven babies, their eyes blacked out and their faces flat, without expression. They were unrecognizable… or the should have been, except Rachel recognized one thing - a baby’s blanket, pale yellow with an image of a teddy bear at the bottom.   
Without thinking, she dove across the basement floor, frantically rummaging through one of the old boxes and pulling out what she was looking for. “It’s me,” she said, barely believing the words. “I’m part of their plan. At least, I’m one part of it.”   
Dick looked at her, confused, so she shoved the book at him. “Look. This blanket - see, that’s me.” She pointed at one of the pictures. “And these are the other cult babies. We’re somehow connected to this weird poem.”   
Dick raised an eyebrow. “I think they might be your siblings, more of Trigon’s weird cult children. Look - seven sins, seven kids, a weird prophecy that you’re supposed to serve Trigon. It makes sense.”   
Rachel’s heart sank. “So… there’s more of me out there. More people to serve under   
Trigon’s demonic army.”   
“We don’t know that,” Dick said, but it was clear that there was doubt in his voice.   
“He’s probably recruiting them right now. He knows that I’m not budging, I proved that after the confrontation at school… but if he can get the other six on his side, we’re fucked anyway.” Rachel sunk back into the floor, her shoulders slumped. “Face it. It’s fucking hopeless.   
I doomed the whole world and my demonic cult family is probably so happy about it.”   
Dick opened his mouth to say something, but just then, they heard the unmistakable sound of a slamming door upstairs. Rachel jumped in surprise, clamping a hand over her mouth as she heard voices.   
“That bitch just left a few days ago! After fucking ruining my damn house with her angsty teenage tantrums.”   
Dick looked at her, his eyes wide. “Is that your mother?” Before Rachel could respond, another voice chimed in.   
“I’m just asking if you saw her anywhere,” Kori. What was she doing here? Even from in the basement, Rachel could hear the anger in her voice, the biting and accusatory tone. Her best friend had never trusted her mother, definitely for good reason. But hearing her face off against Rachel’s greatest adversary (well, greatest adversary until she met her even more awful father) made her heart clench.   
Dick had tensed up, presumably recognizing Kori’s voice as well. His hand was clenched tightly against another book, his knuckles going white. She couldn’t blame him. Rachel’s breath hitched as she heard her mother screech again.   
“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”   
“Checking her bedroom.” Kori responded, deadpan.   
“I’m going to call the police if you don’t get out of my house!” Her mother’s high-pitched wails echoed through the walls, permeating into the basement and making Rachel’s skin crawl. She hated the sound of that scream, like the echoes of a banshee in the forest, like waking up to a thunderstorm knowing that your life was going to be upturned within the next moment.   
“Hey, hey, what the fuck is going on out here?” It was a man’s voice, coase and angry. Rachel’s heart pounded. Her mother wasn’t known for bringing home the safest of people. The last thing she wanted was for Kori to get caught up in something awful… something that had happened to her.   
“I’m here for my friend,” Kori’s voice rang out. “This has nothing to do with you.”   
“Don’t fucking talk to me like that - hey!” There were loud footsteps up the stairs, and then, a deafening silence.   
Dick grabbed Rachel’s shoulder. “We have to go help her,” he whispered frantically. Rachel nodded. She didn’t know what her mother and whatever awful man she’d brought home would do if she got angry enough at Kori, and she really didn’t want to wait around and find out.   
They ran up the stairs, Rachel’s stomach in knots as she thought about what horrific fate could befall Kori. Her friend had no idea about the extent to which her mother’s abuse could go, especially when one of the men she brought home was involved.   
As they ran up the stairs to her bedroom, Rachel froze. The man in front of her looked at her with malice in his eyes, menace in his crooked grin. His face was marred, scars dragging across the old, wrinkled skin, and prickly white facial hair growing over what she could only assume were the remnants of old face tattoos. He looked like he was probably part of some biker gang, or some off-road trucker, the kind of person that frequented the bars that her mother went to. The kind of person she had brought home days ago to take advantage of her only daughter.   
Rachel knew where she had to go, knew that Kori was trapped in the bedroom with her mother, potentially in trouble, but all she could see when she stared up at the man was a vision of her worst nightmare. The moment in her life that she would do anything to erase from her memory and past. Though they were far apart, Rachel could swear that she felt his hands snake around her, swear that she felt a touch in places she wished didn’t exist now.   
“Aw, the poor little girl. Scared of me, huh?” The man jeered. “Come on now, I ain’t so scary. Good enough for your mom, ain’t I? She brought me home, made me the man of the house. And I say we kick you out.”   
Dick grabbed her shoulder. “Rachel, come on!”   
“And little man here tryna’ protect his lady, ain’t he?” He said, chuckling darkly.   
There was a yell from inside the bedroom, but Rachel couldn’t tell who it belonged to. All she knew at that moment was that she needed to save her friend.   
Mustering up as much vitriol as she possibly could, Rachel spoke clearly. “Fuck you,” she said. Then, she pushed past him, running into the bedroom, Dick following in suit. She could hear the other man’s yells from behind him, but her only thought now was to protect Kori. As she rushed and opened the door, she saw her mother pinning Kori to the ground, her knee wedged into her best friend’s throat.   
“Oh, you’re one of those mutants too, aren’t you? Just like my god forsaken daughter!   
You think I’m scared of your skinny ass?”   
“Mother!” Rachel screamed. She ran to Kori’s aid, tackling her mother, throwing her dead weight onto her to try and get her off. “Leave her alone!” They tumbled onto the ground, Rachel trying to keep her mother down as the older woman continued to kick and scream.   
“Oh, now you decide to come home, don’t you?” Her mother yelled as she pulled at   
Rachel’s hair. “You good for nothing whiny little bitch, you sent your fucking tigers after me? What, you didn’t tell them that it was you who broke the house and left me here to die? Always playing the fucking victim!” Her mother lunged for her again.   
“Don’t fucking touch me!” Rachel said, trying to shove the woman away. Dick was holding back the man behind them, who was also now yelling obscenities.   
Her mother laughed, but there was no humor behind it - only anger and bitterness. “I raise you for sixteen years, I fucking worked my ass off to put a roof over your ungrateful head, give you food, and for what? I should have let your demon-spawn ass starve to death, saved the world. I would have been hailed as a hero.”   
Normally, whatever her mother said to her simply washed over Rachel, her tirade just an angry tide crashing over a rock on the seas. But this time, her words cut deeply because Rachel knew how true they were. If she had never been born at all, the whole world wouldn’t be in the jeopardy it was in now.   
“No one who considers themselves a fucking mother would talk to their child that way,” Kori said. She was standing now, and there was power in her voice. Rachel’s eyes widened as she saw Kori’s eyes glowing yellow. No, it wasn’t just yellow, Rachel realized. Kori’s eyes looked like they were made of the sun. The fire didn’t just stop in her eyes though. Kori’s arms were slowly turning from their deep brown and glowing into a dark orange, then a burning flame that looked like a sunflare.   
“Kori,” Dick said, his voice struck with both amazement and slight fear. “What the fuck.”   
“More fucking mutants,” Her mothers voice said with disgust. Rachel wondered how she could be so cruel and dismissive, so painfully sure she was in the right, even in the face of...whatever Kori truly was. “You all gang up together, don’t you?”   
“I assure you, I’m not a mutant,” Kori said. “But I do have the power to make your life a living hell if you don’t leave Rachel alone.”   
“Jake, get the fucking bike,” Rachel’s mother said, presumably to the man from earlier. Rachel was about to turn around, look for where the asshat had run off to, when she felt the unmistakable feeling of cold metal on the back of her head and the click of a revolver that was too close to her for comfort. She froze in place, her breath catching in her throat.   
“I don’t know about all this mutant stuff,” The man - Jake - said. “But I do know that a   
glock is the answer to all my problems. So, either you teenagers leave me and this lady alone to do our business, or this bitch is going to get it. Now.”   
Everyone around Rachel had suddenly gone very still and silent.   
“Jake, don’t do this,” Dick spoke, his voice hoarse, but firm. “Put down the gun. Walk away from this.”   
Jake laughed. “I don’t walk away from a bunch of limp dick asshats trying to take over my house. I put fucking silver in them,” he finished with a sneer, pushing the head of the revolver with more pressure against Rachel’s head.   
Then everything happened fast. Before anyone else could say anything, Rachel heard the sound of a tiger roaring loudly, Jake’s surprised yell, and then, a gunshot firing off. She screamed, holding her hands over her ears and taking cover. But when Rachel opened her eyes, she realized that she hadn’t been shot.   
She turned to see Jake pinned to the ground, squirming against a large tiger… a large green tiger. It roared again, slower, but more vicious. Before she could process this new information, Rachel saw her mother lunge for her again out of the corner of her eye, and she ducked, running towards Kori instead, who was now standing next to Dick.   
Kori was more than just slightly made of flames now - she literally looked like she had been set ablaze. “Take cover everyone and shield your eyes!” she yelled. Rachel did as she asked, and in an instant, she felt the heat of fresh flames licking at her skin and heard the screams of her mother and Jake.   
“Jake get the hell out! Move your ass!”   
“I’m going, I’m going, bitch, stop fucking pushing!”   
“I’m not burning to death in here, get the fuck out!”   
“Your daughter is a fucking bitch!”   
Rachel could hear their arguing even as their voices faded, and now there was no sound but sound of lapping flames all around her. She opened her eyes slowly, only to see a ring of fire surrounding her, Kori, and Dick. Outside this fire, the large green tiger stood at the ready, nursing it’s paw. Rachel wondered if it was Kori’s strange mutant pet - either way, she was grateful for it’s presence.   
“Shit, Kori, we have to go,” Dick said. Rachel looked around - he was right. The fire was raging and already spreading quickly through the bedroom. Soon, she knew the entire house would be engulfed.   
“I know,” Kori replied. She helped Rachel to her feet, nodding at the tiger. “Take Rachel with you. I’ve got Dick.”   
Before Rachel could respond, she found herself being hoisted up onto the tiger’s back.   
“Wait-” she cried out, looking back at Kori, who was now carrying Dick.   
“We’ll meet you out in the forest out back! This place doesn’t look like it’s going to hold up much longer!” Kori yelled back. Rachel didn’t have time to say anything else before a huge wooden beam cracked above them, falling with a tremendous thud in front of them, engulfing in flames.   
The tiger roared again, then started bounding away from the room. Rachel looked back to see the last remnants of the room she had spent her whole life in up until now. It looked almost fitting to see it finally go up in flames - like a final countdown to the start of her new life. She leaned down and clung to the tiger’s back. Though every inch of her rational sense told her that this was a dangerous animal, there was a part of Rachel that felt at peace, and she knew that she could trust the large animal that carried her out.   
They escaped the house through the back door and tore through the yard and into the woods out back. It had always been Rachel’s favorite escape from her torturous life when she was little. She closed her eyes, buried her face in the tiger’s fur as they ran deeper into the forest.   
After a moment, they stopped, and she opened her eyes to see Kori and Dick sitting on a log. Kori looked exhausted, barely able to sit up straight as she gasped for breath. Dick sat next to her, holding her up.   
Rachel gingerly hopped off of the tiger’s back, only now really able to get a good look at the creature in front of her. It’s eyes stared back at her like it was trying to say something… and something about them looked so familiar…   
But before she could dwell on it any longer, the tiger curled up at her feet, whimpering slightly - something Rachel didn’t even realize that tigers could do. And before her eyes, she gasped as she saw the once ferocious beast shrink and shrink, until there was only a teenage boy in front of her. A certain teenage boy.   
“Logan?” Rachel asked, in utter disbelief. Behind her, Dick let out a strangled gasp.   
He gave her a weak smile, “Guess you know my secret now-” he started, before he doubled over again in pain. “Augh,” he managed to get out as he pressed his hand to his waist.   
When he removed it, it was covered in a deep crimson.   
Rachel quickly knelt down next to him, letting out a gasp as she saw the damage. She’d thought the gunshot had simply gone through the wall, but she had been sorely mistaken. Logan had been grazed badly by the bullet. Shit. Could she even heal under these circumstances - no book to aid her, barely even recharged from the last time she’d healed Dick?   
It didn’t matter to Rachel anyway. All she knew was that Logan was hurt. And it was because he saved her.   
“Thank you,” she whispered, unable to stop tears from springing to her eyes as she pressed a hand to Logan’s wound. Logan winced, shifting underneath the pressure. “I- I can heal you. If you let me.” she spoke softly.   
“Rachel, no,” Dick said, his tone full of warning. “You’ve barely recovered from healing me.”   
Rachel glared. “I can’t let him suffer like this after he ran into a burning building to save me - us,” she quickly amended, feeling the blood rush to her cheeks.   
Logan sucked in a breath. “I’m fine,” he said, his voice strained. “Save your energy,   
Rachel, please.”   
“You’re not fine,” Rachel countered. “You’re bleeding out.” Without waiting for any other protests, Rachel closed her eyes, concentrating on the wound. She tried to visualize turning back the clock, seeping out the bullet’s impact, but there wasn’t any change to the boy’s condition.   
Rachel frowned, looking at the wound again… what was she missing this time? What had the book emphasized? She remembered healing Dick, faintly at least. It felt like turning back the clock, almost like changing the course of history so she had been the one impacted by the poison instead of him. That’s the key, Rachel realized with a jolt.   
She positioned her hands over Logan’s wound once more, concentrating this time on taking on Logan’s pain and making it her own. As she concentrated harder, she began to feel a sharp pain in her side, the feeling of weakness in her body, a screaming pain in her waist. With difficulty, Rachel opened her eyes again to see Logan sitting up slowly, his eyes full of awe as he saw his skin fully patched over.   
“Holy shit. You’re amazing, Rachel. I wish I actually had cool powers like you! All I get is green tiger and you’re out here literally healing people?”   
“Your abilities,” Dick said, seemingly impressed “You’re getting better at controlling them now.”   
Rachel grinned, looking down at her hands, trying to ignore the newfound searing pain in her side. Finally, something was going well for her. Finally, she felt like she had a shot at handling whatever her father was getting ready to throw at her.   
Kori came over and hugged her. “I’m so proud of you,” she whispered. But even as her friend’s support washed over her, Rachel felt a sinking feeling in her chest.   
Careful, Rachel. Rachel heard the words puncture through her skull. The voice in her head was deep and full of malice, unmistakably her father, These talents come with strings… strings I hope to use to puppet you right into my hands. 


End file.
